Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-analytic-number-theory-and-elliptic-curves-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2008/b/6/iii/solution
Past exam of the analytic number theory and elliptic curves course of the University of Oxford 2008 B 6 iii Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-31
The curve has good reduction at five and seven: its discriminant is , and the hypotheses make a unit at those primes. Over the cubing map is a bijection, soThe character sum vanishes after replacing by a variable ranging over the whole field. Over , where , the possible cubes are zero once, one three times, and minus one three times. The corresponding right sides are two, three and one. Two and one are nonzero squares while three is not, so the count is .
Rational torsion injects into the reduction group at a good odd prime, a standard reduction theorem. Thus its order divides . If a point of order three existed, its coordinates would be integral by the Nagell–Lutz theorem. Since , the duplication formula givesThus either and , or and .
At the prime in the hypothesis, is a nonsquare unit. Since , there is a nontrivial cube root of unity , and . Hence is a nonzero square, so both and are nonsquares. Neither ordinate equation is possible even modulo . There is no rational point of order three, proving
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