Tate–Shafarevich group

In arithmetic geometry, the Tate–Shafarevich group Ш(A/K) of an abelian variety A (or more generally a group scheme) defined over a number field K consists of the elements of the Weil–Châtelet group , where is the absolute Galois group of K, that become trivial in all of the completions of K (i.e., the real and complex completions as well as the p-adic fields obtained from K by completing with respect to all its Archimedean and non Archimedean valuations v). Thus, in terms of Galois cohomology, Ш(A/K) can be defined as

This group was introduced by Serge Lang and John Tate[1] and Igor Shafarevich.[2] Cassels introduced the notation Ш(A/K), where Ш is the Cyrillic letter "Sha", for Shafarevich, replacing the older notation TS or .

Elements of the Tate–Shafarevich group

Geometrically, the non-trivial elements of the Tate–Shafarevich group can be thought of as the homogeneous spaces of A that have Kv-rational points for every place v of K, but no K-rational point. Thus, the group measures the extent to which the Hasse principle fails to hold for rational equations with coefficients in the field K. Carl-Erik Lind gave an example of such a homogeneous space, by showing that the genus 1 curve x4 − 17 = 2y2 has solutions over the reals and over all p-adic fields, but has no rational points.[3] Ernst S. Selmer gave many more examples, such as 3x3 + 4y3 + 5z3 = 0.[4]

The special case of the Tate–Shafarevich group for the finite group scheme consisting of points of some given finite order n of an abelian variety is closely related to the Selmer group.

Tate-Shafarevich conjecture

The Tate–Shafarevich conjecture states that the Tate–Shafarevich group is finite. Karl Rubin proved this for some elliptic curves of rank at most 1 with complex multiplication.[5] Victor A. Kolyvagin extended this to modular elliptic curves over the rationals of analytic rank at most 1 (The modularity theorem later showed that the modularity assumption always holds).[6]

Cassels–Tate pairing

The Cassels–Tate pairing is a bilinear pairing Ш(A) × Ш(Â) → Q/Z, where A is an abelian variety and  is its dual. Cassels introduced this for elliptic curves, when A can be identified with  and the pairing is an alternating form.[7] The kernel of this form is the subgroup of divisible elements, which is trivial if the Tate–Shafarevich conjecture is true. Tate extended the pairing to general abelian varieties, as a variation of Tate duality.[8] A choice of polarization on A gives a map from A to Â, which induces a bilinear pairing on Ш(A) with values in Q/Z, but unlike the case of elliptic curves this need not be alternating or even skew symmetric.

For an elliptic curve, Cassels showed that the pairing is alternating, and a consequence is that if the order of Ш is finite then it is a square. For more general abelian varieties it was sometimes incorrectly believed for many years that the order of Ш is a square whenever it is finite; this mistake originated in a paper by Swinnerton-Dyer,[9] who misquoted one of the results of Tate.[8] Poonen and Stoll gave some examples where the order is twice a square, such as the Jacobian of a certain genus 2 curve over the rationals whose Tate–Shafarevich group has order 2,[10] and Stein gave some examples where the power of an odd prime dividing the order is odd.[11] If the abelian variety has a principal polarization then the form on Ш is skew symmetric which implies that the order of Ш is a square or twice a square (if it is finite), and if in addition the principal polarization comes from a rational divisor (as is the case for elliptic curves) then the form is alternating and the order of Ш is a square (if it is finite).

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