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In mathematics, a Heegner point is a point on a modular curve that is the image of a quadratic imaginary point of the upper half-plane. They were defined by Bryan Birch and named after Kurt Heegner, who used similar ideas to prove Gauss's conjecture on imaginary quadratic fields of class number one.
The Gross–Zagier theorem( Gross & Zagier 1986 ) describes the height of Heegner points in terms of a derivative of the L-function of the elliptic curve at the point s = 1. In particular if the elliptic curve has (analytic) rank 1, then the Heegner points can be used to construct a rational point on the curve of infinite order (so the Mordell–Weil group has rank at least 1). More generally, Gross, Kohnen & Zagier (1987) showed that Heegner points could be used to construct rational points on the curve for each positive integer n, and the heights of these points were the coefficients of a modular form of weight 3/2. Shou-Wu Zhang generalized the Gross–Zagier theorem from elliptic curves to the case of modular abelian varieties (Zhang 2001 , 2004, Yuan ,Zhang& Zhang 2009).
Kolyvagin later used Heegner points to construct Euler systems, and used this to prove much of the Birch–Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture for rank 1 elliptic curves. Brown proved the Birch–Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture for most rank 1 elliptic curves over global fields of positive characteristic ( Brown 1994 ).
Heegner points can be used to compute very large rational points on rank 1 elliptic curves (see ( Watkins 2006 ) for a survey) that could not be found by naive methods. Implementations of the algorithm are available in Magma, PARI/GP, and Sage.
The modularity theorem states that elliptic curves over the field of rational numbers are related to modular forms. Andrew Wiles proved the modularity theorem for semistable elliptic curves, which was enough to imply Fermat's Last Theorem. Later, a series of papers by Wiles's former students Brian Conrad, Fred Diamond and Richard Taylor, culminating in a joint paper with Christophe Breuil, extended Wiles's techniques to prove the full modularity theorem in 2001.
In number theory, the Baker–Heegner–Stark theorem establishes the complete list of the quadratic imaginary number fields whose rings of integers are unique factorization domains. It solves a special case of Gauss's class number problem of determining the number of imaginary quadratic fields that have a given fixed class number.
In mathematics, the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture describes the set of rational solutions to equations defining an elliptic curve. It is an open problem in the field of number theory and is widely recognized as one of the most challenging mathematical problems. It is named after mathematicians Bryan John Birch and Peter Swinnerton-Dyer, who developed the conjecture during the first half of the 1960s with the help of machine computation. As of 2022, only special cases of the conjecture have been proven.
In mathematics, the Gauss class number problem, as usually understood, is to provide for each n ≥ 1 a complete list of imaginary quadratic fields having class number n. It is named after Carl Friedrich Gauss. It can also be stated in terms of discriminants. There are related questions for real quadratic fields and for the behavior as .
Don Bernard Zagier is an American-German mathematician whose main area of work is number theory. He is currently one of the directors of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn, Germany. He was a professor at the Collège de France in Paris from 2006 to 2014. Since October 2014, he is also a Distinguished Staff Associate at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP).
This is a glossary of arithmetic and diophantine geometry in mathematics, areas growing out of the traditional study of Diophantine equations to encompass large parts of number theory and algebraic geometry. Much of the theory is in the form of proposed conjectures, which can be related at various levels of generality.
Shou-Wu Zhang is a Chinese-American mathematician known for his work in number theory and arithmetic geometry. He is currently a Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University.
Benedict Hyman Gross is an American mathematician who is a professor at the University of California San Diego, the George Vasmer Leverett Professor of Mathematics Emeritus at Harvard University, and former Dean of Harvard College.
Bryan John Birch FRS is a British mathematician. His name has been given to the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture.
Dorian Morris Goldfeld is an American mathematician working in analytic number theory and automorphic forms at Columbia University.
In mathematics, the main conjecture of Iwasawa theory is a deep relationship between p-adic L-functions and ideal class groups of cyclotomic fields, proved by Kenkichi Iwasawa for primes satisfying the Kummer–Vandiver conjecture and proved for all primes by Mazur and Wiles (1984). The Herbrand–Ribet theorem and the Gras conjecture are both easy consequences of the main conjecture. There are several generalizations of the main conjecture, to totally real fields, CM fields, elliptic curves, and so on.
In mathematics, the Mordell–Weil theorem states that for an abelian variety over a number field , the group of K-rational points of is a finitely-generated abelian group, called the Mordell–Weil group. The case with an elliptic curve and the field of rational numbers is Mordell's theorem, answering a question apparently posed by Henri Poincaré around 1901; it was proved by Louis Mordell in 1922. It is a foundational theorem of Diophantine geometry and the arithmetic of abelian varieties.
In arithmetic geometry, the Tate–Shafarevich groupШ(A/K) of an abelian variety A (or more generally a group scheme) defined over a number field K consists of the elements of the Weil–Châtelet group WC(A/K) = H1(GK, A) that become trivial in all of the completions of K (i.e. the p-adic fields obtained from K, as well as its real and complex completions). Thus, in terms of Galois cohomology, it can be written as
In mathematics, Heegner's lemma is a lemma used by Kurt Heegner in his paper on the class number problem. His lemma states that if
Wei Zhang is a Chinese mathematician specializing in number theory. He is currently a Professor of Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In mathematics, the rank of an elliptic curve is the rational Mordell–Weil rank of an elliptic curve defined over the field of rational numbers. Mordell's theorem says the group of rational points on an elliptic curve has a finite basis. This means that for any elliptic curve there is a finite subset of the rational points on the curve, from which all further rational points may be generated. If the number of rational points on a curve is infinite then some point in a finite basis must have infinite order. The number of independent basis points with infinite order is the rank of the curve.
Xinyi Yuan is a Chinese mathematician who is currently a professor of mathematics at Peking University working in number theory, arithmetic geometry, and automorphic forms. In particular, his work focuses on arithmetic intersection theory, algebraic dynamics, Diophantine equations and special values of L-functions.
Christopher McLean Skinner is an American mathematician working in number theory and arithmetic aspects of the Langlands program. He specialises in algebraic number theory.
Eric Jean-Paul Urban is a professor of mathematics at Columbia University working in number theory and automorphic forms, particularly Iwasawa theory.
Samit Dasgupta is a professor of mathematics at Duke University working in algebraic number theory.