Explicit Heegner points: Kolyvagin's conjecture and non-trivial elements in the Shafarevich–Tate group

Abstract

Kolyvagin used Heegner points to associate a system of cohomology classes to an elliptic curve over Q and conjectured that the system contains a non-trivial class. His conjecture has profound implications on the structure of Selmer groups. We provide new computational and theoretical evidence for Kolyvagin's conjecture. More precisely, we explicitly approximate Heegner points over ring class fields and use these points to give evidence for the conjecture for specific elliptic curves of rank two. We explain how Kolyvagin's conjecture implies that if the analytic rank of an elliptic curve is at least two then the Z p -corank of the corresponding Selmer group is at least two as well. We also use explicitly computed Heegner points to produce non-trivial classes in the Shafarevich–Tate group.