Given an elliptic curve $E$ over $\mathbb{Q}$, a celebrated conjecture of Goldfeld asserts that a positive proportion of its quadratic twists should have analytic rank 0 (respectively 1). We show that this conjecture holds whenever $E$ has a rational 3-isogeny. We also prove the analogous result for the sextic twists of $j$-invariant 0 curves. For a more general elliptic curve $E$, we show that the number of quadratic twists of $E$ up to twisting discriminant $X$ of analytic rank 0 (respectively 1) is $\gg X/\log ^{5/6}X$, improving the current best general bound toward Goldfeld’s conjecture due to Ono–Skinner (respectively Perelli–Pomykala). To prove these results, we establish a congruence formula between $p$-adic logarithms of Heegner points and apply it in the special cases $p=3$ and $p=2$ to construct the desired twists explicitly. As a by-product, we also prove the corresponding $p$-part of the Birch and Swinnerton–Dyer conjecture for these explicit twists.

Most systematic tables of data associated to ranks of elliptic curves order the curves by conductor. Recent developments, led by work of Bhargava and Shankar studying the average sizes of $n$-Selmer groups, have given new upper bounds on the average algebraic rank in families of elliptic curves over $\mathbb{Q}$, ordered by height. We describe databases of elliptic curves over $\mathbb{Q}$, ordered by height, in which we compute ranks and $2$-Selmer group sizes, the distributions of which may also be compared to these theoretical results. A striking new phenomenon that we observe in our database is that the average rank eventually decreases as height increases.

Let $E$ be an elliptic curve over $\mathbb{Q}$, and let ${\it\varrho}_{\flat }$ and ${\it\varrho}_{\sharp }$ be odd two-dimensional Artin representations for which ${\it\varrho}_{\flat }\otimes {\it\varrho}_{\sharp }$ is self-dual. The progress on modularity achieved in recent decades ensures the existence of normalized eigenforms $f$, $g$, and $h$ of respective weights two, one, and one, giving rise to $E$, ${\it\varrho}_{\flat }$, and ${\it\varrho}_{\sharp }$ via the constructions of Eichler and Shimura, and of Deligne and Serre. This article examines certain $p$-adic iterated integrals attached to the triple $(f,g,h)$, which are $p$-adic avatars of the leading term of the Hasse–Weil–Artin $L$-series $L(E,{\it\varrho}_{\flat }\otimes {\it\varrho}_{\sharp },s)$ when it has a double zero at the centre. A formula is proposed for these iterated integrals, involving the formal group logarithms of global points on $E$—referred to as Stark points—which are defined over the number field cut out by ${\it\varrho}_{\flat }\otimes {\it\varrho}_{\sharp }$. This formula can be viewed as an elliptic curve analogue of Stark’s conjecture on units attached to weight-one forms. It is proved when $g$ and $h$ are binary theta series attached to a common imaginary quadratic field in which $p$ splits, by relating the arithmetic quantities that arise in it to elliptic units and Heegner points. Fast algorithms for computing $p$-adic iterated integrals based on Katz expansions of overconvergent modular forms are then exploited to gather numerical evidence in more exotic scenarios, encompassing Mordell–Weil groups over cyclotomic fields, ring class fields of real quadratic fields (a setting which may shed light on the theory of Stark–Heegner points attached to Shintani-type cycles on ${\mathcal{H}}_{p}\times {\mathcal{H}}$), and extensions of $\mathbb{Q}$ with Galois group a central extension of the dihedral group $D_{2n}$ or of one of the exceptional subgroups $A_{4}$, $S_{4}$, and $A_{5}$ of $\mathbf{PGL}_{2}(\mathbb{C})$.

We solve the Diophantine equation $Y^{2}=X^{3}+k$ for all nonzero integers $k$ with $|k|\leqslant 10^{7}$. Our approach uses a classical connection between these equations and cubic Thue equations. The latter can be treated algorithmically via lower bounds for linear forms in logarithms in conjunction with lattice-basis reduction.

We study the growth of $\unicode[STIX]{x0428}$ and $p^{\infty }$-Selmer groups for isogenous abelian varieties in towers of number fields, with an emphasis on elliptic curves. The growth types are usually exponential, as in the ‘positive ${\it\mu}$-invariant’ setting in the Iwasawa theory of elliptic curves. The towers we consider are $p$-adic and $l$-adic Lie extensions for $l\neq p$, in particular cyclotomic and other $\mathbb{Z}_{l}$-extensions.

In this paper we consider ordinary elliptic curves over global function fields of characteristic $\def \xmlpi #1{}\def \mathsfbi #1{\boldsymbol {\mathsf {#1}}}\let \le =\leqslant \let \leq =\leqslant \let \ge =\geqslant \let \geq =\geqslant \def \Pr {\mathit {Pr}}\def \Fr {\mathit {Fr}}\def \Rey {\mathit {Re}}2$. We present a method for performing a descent by using powers of the Frobenius and the Verschiebung. An examination of the local images of the descent maps together with a duality theorem yields information about the global Selmer groups. Explicit models for the homogeneous spaces representing the elements of the Selmer groups are given and used to construct independent points on the elliptic curve. As an application we use descent maps to prove an upper bound for the naive height of an $S$-integral point on $A$. To illustrate our methods, a detailed example is presented.

We study the distribution of 2-Selmer ranks in the family of quadratic twists of an elliptic curve $\def \xmlpi #1{}\def \mathsfbi #1{\boldsymbol {\mathsf {#1}}}\let \le =\leqslant \let \leq =\leqslant \let \ge =\geqslant \let \geq =\geqslant \def \Pr {\mathit {Pr}}\def \Fr {\mathit {Fr}}\def \Rey {\mathit {Re}}E$ over an arbitrary number field $K$. Under the assumption that ${\rm Gal}(K(E[2])/K) \ {\cong }\ S_3$, we show that the density (counted in a nonstandard way) of twists with Selmer rank $r$ exists for all positive integers $r$, and is given via an equilibrium distribution, depending only on a single parameter (the ‘disparity’), of a certain Markov process that is itself independent of $E$ and $K$. More generally, our results also apply to $p$-Selmer ranks of twists of two-dimensional self-dual ${\bf F}_p$-representations of the absolute Galois group of $K$ by characters of order $p$.

We construct an elliptic curve over the field of rational functions with torsion group $\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}\times \mathbb{Z}/4\mathbb{Z}$ and rank equal to four, and an elliptic curve over $\mathbb{Q}$ with the same torsion group and rank nine. Both results improve previous records for ranks of curves of this torsion group. They are obtained by considering elliptic curves induced by Diophantine triples.

Given an elliptic curve E and a positive integer N, we consider the problem of counting the number of primes p for which the reduction of E modulo p possesses exactly N points over 𝔽p. On average (over a family of elliptic curves), we show bounds that are significantly better than what is trivially obtained by the Hasse bound. Under some additional hypotheses, including a conjecture concerning the short-interval distribution of primes in arithmetic progressions, we obtain an asymptotic formula for the average.

Let E/ℚ be an elliptic curve and let D<0 be a sufficiently large fundamental discriminant. If contains Heegner points of discriminant D, those points generate a subgroup of rank at least |D|δ, where δ>0 is an absolute constant. This result is compatible with the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture.

Cassels has described a pairing on the 2-Selmer group of an elliptic curve which shares some properties with the Cassels–Tate pairing. In this article, we prove that the two pairings are the same.

In his celebrated memoir, Morgan Ward's definition of elliptic divisibility sequences has the remarkable feature that it does not become at all clear until deep into the paper that there exist nontrivial examples of such sequences. Even then, Ward's proof of the coherence of his definition relies on displaying a sequence of values of quotients of Weierstraß $\sigma$-functions. We give a direct proof of coherence and show, rather more generally, that a sequence defined by a so-called Somos relation of width 4 is always also given by three-term Somos relations of all larger widths $5, 6, 7, \ldots.$

The non-degeneracy of the canonical $p$-adic height pairing defined by Perrin-Riou and Schneider on an elliptic curve over a number field with good, ordinary reduction is still unknown.

Following the work done for the real-valued pairing, the behaviour of the $p$-adic height is analysed as a point varies on a section of a family of elliptic curves, and so new information is obtained about this pairing. In particular, the variation is $p$-adically continuous and the non-degeneracy of a set of sections can be checked simultaneously for almost all elements of the family. The paper contains some conjectures about the valuation of the $p$-adic regulator and its consequences for the growth of the Mordell–Weil group in cyclotomic $\mathbb{Z}_p$-extensions.