ARBITRARILY LARGE p-TORSION IN TATE-SHAFAREVICH GROUPS

Abstract

Abstract We show that, for any prime p, there exist absolutely simple abelian varieties over $\mathbb {Q}$ with arbitrarily large p-torsion in their Tate-Shafarevich groups. To prove this, we construct explicit $\mu _p$ -covers of Jacobians of curves of the form $y^p = x(x-1)(x-a)$ which violate the Hasse principle. In the appendix, Tom Fisher explains how to interpret our proof in terms of a Cassels-Tate pairing.