Small height and infinite nonabelian extensions (Q364197): Difference between revisions

The author works with an elliptic curve \(E\) without complex multiplication defined over \(\mathbb{Q}\). The field extension \(F\) generated over \(\mathbb{Q}\) by all torsion points of \(E\) is an infinite, nonabelian Galois extension of the rationals which has unbounded, wild ramification above all primes. The author proved that the absolute logarithmic Weil height of an element of \(F\) is either zero or bounded bellow by a positive constant depending on \(E\). A similar gap is proved for the Neron-Tate height on \(E(F)\). Since \(E\) is defined over \(\mathbb{Q}\), is necessary to apply a theorem of Elkies on the existence of infinitely many supersingular primes. The proof is based on the decomposition of the height in local terms. For non-archimedean places a dichotomy into ramified and unramified places appear. In the ramified case, Lubin-Tate theory replaces Frobenius to find a suitable replacement with large centralizer in the Galois Group. The estimate of the lower bound for Archimedean places relies on Bilu's equidistribution result. The proof of the theorem for the Neron-Tate height is along the same lines, with the equidistribution ideas replaced with Szpiro, Ullmo, Zhang equidistribution and refined with a theorem of Chambert-Loir on non-archimedean equidistribution at places of split multiplicative reduction. The paper represents a nice introduction to heights and algebraic extensions satisfying the Bogomolov property, i.e., algebraic extensions of \(\mathbb{Q}\) where zero is isolated among height values. Also, the result for the Neron-Tate height is used to determine the structure of \(E(F)\) in the last section.