Thursday, 3 February 2011

Two questions on isomorphic elliptic curves

Question 1: Putting both curves in say, Legendre Normal Form (or else appealing the lefschetz principle) shows that if the two curves are isomorphic over mathbfC then they are isomorphic over overlinemathbfQ. Now we could say that for instance E2 is an element of H1(GoverlineQ,Isom(E1)) where we let Isom(E1) be the group of isomorphisms of E1 as a curve over mathbfQ (as in Silverman, to distinguish from Aut(E1), the automorphisms of E1 as an Elliptic Curve over mathbfQ, that is, automorphisms fixing the identity point). However, E2 is also a principle homogeneous space for a unique curve over mathbfQ with a rational point, which of course has to be E2, so the cocycle E2 represents could be taken to have values in Aut(E1). Now Aut(E1) is well known to be of order 6,4 or 2 depending on whether the j-invariant of E1 is 0, 1728 or anything else, respectively. Moreover the order of the cocycle representing E2 (which we now see must divide 2, 4 or 6) must be the order of the minimal field extension K over which E1 is isomorphic to E2. So K must be degree 2,3,4 or 6 unless I've made an error somewhere.



Question 2: If you restrict your focus to just elliptic curves, yes your idea is right. If it's a quadratic extension, you have exactly 1 non-isomorphic companion. If you have a higher degree number field, you have nothing but composites of the quadratic case unless your elliptic curve has j invariant 0 or 1728.



Notice I am very explicitly using your choice of the word elliptic curve for both of these answers.

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