Some remarks concerning points of finite order on elliptic curves over global fields

Abstract

Using the reduction theory of Nrron we give necessary conditions for the existence of points of order q on elliptic curves E rational over global fields. An application is the determination of all elliptic cu rves /Q with integer j and torsion points, generalizing Olson [8]. Another application is a theorem about semistable reduction whose consequences generalize a theorem of Olson [9] ( K = Q) and give divisibility conditions for the discriminant and the coefficients of E related with the paper of Zimmer [13] as well as diophantine equations related with Fermat's equation that are discussed for K Q and K a function field. We are interested in elliptic curves over global fields K (i.e. : K is a finite number field or K is a function field of one variable over a finite field) and especially in the torsion group of E(K), where E(K) is the group of K-rational points of E. It is well known that E(K) is finitely generated, it is conjectured that if K is a number field then the order of the torsion group of E(K) is bounded by some number depending only on K (cf. Demjanenko [1]). In any case in order to handle with E(K) the first step is to determine the torsion group. In principle this is not so difficult; if one uses the results of Lutz [6] and Zimmer [13], one sees immediately that for every E there exist points of q-power-order only for a finite number of primes q, as the equations for points of order q are known (in principle) one has only t ~ test what orders really occur. But as the computational work grows very rapidly with q it is usefull to look for sharper necessary conditions, and this shall be done in this paper.