Elements of given order in Tate–Shafarevich groups of abelian varieties in quadratic twist families

Abstract

Let $A$ be an abelian variety over a number field $F$ and let $p$ be a prime. Cohen-Lenstra-Delaunay-style heuristics predict that the Tate-Shafarevich group of $A_s$ should contain an element of order $p$ for a positive proportion of quadratic twists $A_s$ of $A$. We give a general method to prove instances of this conjecture by exploiting independent isogenies of $A$. For each prime $p$, there is a large class of elliptic curves for which our method shows that a positive proportion of quadratic twists have nontrivial $p$-torsion in their Tate-Shafarevich groups. In particular, when the modular curve $X_0(3p)$ has infinitely many $F$-rational points the method applies to ``most'' elliptic curves $E$ having a cyclic $3p$-isogeny. It also applies in certain cases when $X_0(3p)$ has only finitely many points. For example, we find an elliptic curve over $\mathbb{Q}$ for which a positive proportion of quadratic twists have an element of order $5$ in their Tate-Shafarevich groups. The method applies to abelian varieties of arbitrary dimension, at least in principle. As a proof of concept, we give, for each prime $p \equiv 1 \pmod 9$, examples of CM abelian threefolds with a positive proportion of quadratic twists having elements of order $p$ in their Tate-Shafarevich groups.