Because is a separable isogeny,
The degree-zero divisor
corresponds under to the sum of all elements of the finite abelian group . Pairing every with shows that this sum is the sum of the elements in . It vanishes when that intersection has one element and also when it has four elements, since the sum of the four elements of is zero. The principal divisor criterion on an elliptic curve therefore gives a rational function with .
The divisor is invariant under , so has zero divisor and is constant. Applying twice shows that this constant has square one; hence .
For a short Weierstrass equation of an elliptic curve
the multiplication-by-two isogeny has
Thus one may take , and . For multiplication by three, the third division polynomial of an elliptic curve
vanishes simply at the eight nonzero points of and has a pole of order eight at . Hence has divisor and satisfies . Both signs occur.
Let be a smooth plane cubic whose identity is an inflection point. A line through and , using the tangent when , has a third intersection counted with multiplicity. The chord-and-tangent group law defines by drawing the line through and and taking its third intersection.
The clean verification of the group axioms uses divisors. The line at infinity meets a Weierstrass cubic in , so three collinear points satisfy
Consequently the map
sends the chord-and-tangent construction to addition of divisor classes. The principal divisor criterion on an elliptic curve shows that this map is bijective. Associativity and commutativity therefore follow from the abelian group law on . The tangent convention handles repeated intersections, represents the zero class, and the third point on the line through and represents the inverse of . Hence all group axioms hold.
The principal divisor criterion on an elliptic curve says that is principal exactly when and .
On , take
The line meets the cubic three times at , while has a triple pole at the point at infinity. Hence
With , part (a) gives
Taking divisors and cancelling the factor three yields
Pullback on degree-zero divisor classes is the dual isogeny, so the pulled-back class is represented by . It is principal, and therefore