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Averages of the number of
points on elliptic curves
Greg Martin, Paul Pollack and Ethan Smith |
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Vol. 8 (2014), No. 4, 813–836
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Abstract |
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If is an elliptic curve defined over and is a prime of good reduction for , let denote the set of points on the reduced curve modulo . Define an arithmetic function by setting . Recently, David and the third author studied the average of over certain “boxes” of elliptic curves . Assuming a plausible conjecture about primes in short intervals, they showed the following: for each , the average of over a box with sufficiently large sides is for an explicitly given function . The function is somewhat peculiar: defined as a product over the primes dividing , it resembles a multiplicative function at first glance. But further inspection reveals that it is not, and so one cannot directly investigate its properties by the usual tools of multiplicative number theory. In this paper, we overcome these difficulties and prove a number of statistical results about . For example, we determine the mean value of over all , odd and prime , and we show that has a distribution function. We also explain how our results relate to existing theorems and conjectures on the multiplicative properties of , such as Koblitz’s conjecture. |
Keywords
elliptic curves, Koblitz conjecture, mean values of
arithmetic functions
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Mathematical Subject Classification 2010
Primary: 11G05
Secondary: 11N37, 11N60
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Milestones
Received: 26 August 2012
Revised: 14 December 2013
Accepted: 15 February 2014
Published: 10 August 2014
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Authors |
| Greg Martin | |
| Department of Mathematics University of British Columbia Room 121 1984 Mathematics Road Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2 Canada |
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| Paul Pollack | |
| Department of Mathematics University of Georgia Boyd Graduate Studies Research Center Athens, GA 30602 United States |
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| Ethan Smith | |
| Department of Mathematics Liberty University 1971 University Blvd. Lynchburg, VA 24502 United States |
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