Signed divisor-two obstruction for an isogeny covering Created 2026-10-07 Updated 2026-10-14
The two-isogeny descent quartics associated with square classes and on have no rational points. A rational solution can be scaled to integral with coprime integers . If is odd, reduction modulo sixteen gives or for the positive class, and or for the negative class; none is a quadratic residue. If is even, then is odd and the right side is , with the same sign on the two signed terms. The bracket is odd, so its 2-adic valuation is exactly five, impossible for a nonzero square. These two parity cases exhaust primitive solutions.
For , the first order bound already gives . The second supplementary law for quadratic reciprocity says that two is then a quadratic residue modulo . Euler's criterion gives , so its multiplicative order divides . Thus , further reducing the candidate factors. At , meets this bound. The restriction matters: has factor five, which is not one modulo eight.
Tonelli-Shanks algorithm 2026-10-20
The Tonelli-Shanks algorithm finds a square root of a quadratic residue modulo an odd prime. It uses the decomposition of the prime minus one into an odd part and a power of two to successively correct a candidate root.