Construction of an infinite family of elliptic curves of 2-Selmer rank 1 from Heron triangles (Q2100586): Difference between revisions

Let us recall that by a Heron triangle we mean a triangle whose lengths of the sides are rational numbers. \textit{E. H. Goins} and \textit{D. Maddox} [Rocky Mt. J. Math. 36, No. 5, 1511--1524 (2006; Zbl 1137.11039)] proved that the existence of a Heron triangle with a given area equal to \(n\in\mathbb{Q}_{>0}\) is equivalent to the existence of rational points of order greater than 2 on the elliptic curve \[ E_{\theta, n}:\;y^2=x(x-n\tau)(x-n\tau^{-1}), \] where \(\tau =\tan\frac{\theta}{2}\in\mathbb{Q}\) and \(\theta\) is a fixed angle of the triangle. In the paper, the authors consider a special family of elliptic curves \(E_{\theta, n}\) related to Heron triangle of area \(n=2^{m}p\), where \(p\) is a prime number, and an angle \(\theta\) such that \(\tau =\tan\frac{\theta}{2}=2^{m}\). More precisely, they are interested in the computation of the 2-Selmer rank of the curve \(E_{\theta, n}\). The main result states that if \(p\equiv 7\pmod{8}\) is a prime and \(q = 4^{m} + 1\) is also a prime such that \(p\) is a quadratic residue modulo \(q\), then the 2-Selmer rank of \(E_{\theta, n}\) is equal to 1 for \(m=1\), and lies between 1 and 3 for \(m\geq 2\). The proof of this result is based on a careful examination of solvability of appropriate homogenous spaces. As an application, it is proved that there are infinitely prime numbers \(p\equiv 7\pmod{8}\) such that \(2p\) is the area of infinitely many Heron triangles with one angle \(\theta\) given by \(\tan \frac{\theta}{2}=2\).