Heads up: number theory seminar on March 18, 2011

[William Stein]

Hi,

There will be a number theory seminar at UW on March 18, 2011 at
3:30pm in Padelford C401.

Speaker: Maarten Derickx, from Leiden, Holland (a Ph.D. student of Bas
Edixhoven)

Title: Torsion points on elliptic curves over number fields of small degree.

Abstract: Merel has shown that if we fix $d \geq 1$, then there are
only finitely many primes $p$ occurring as the order of a torsion point
on an elliptic curve $E/K$ where $K$ is a number field of degree $\leq
d$. Oesterle has proven that the largest such $p$ is smaller then
$(3^{d/2}+1)^2$. Both upper bounds use a criterion by Kammienny. In my
talk I will show several variations on this criterion. I will also
show how to bring down the bound for $d=5$ and $d=6$ using this
criterion using a computer program based on William Steins work on
$d=4$.

--
William Stein
Professor of Mathematics
University of Washington
http://wstein.org