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