A note on lower bounds for Frobenius traces (Q536443)

Let \(X\) be a proper, smooth, geometrically connected curve over \({\mathbb F}_q\) of genus \(g\), where \(q\) is a power of some prime number \(p\).. Then by Weil's Riemann hypothesis for curves over finite fields, one has \(\# X({\mathbb F}_{q^n}=q^n+1-A(n)\), where \(A(n)=\sum_{i=1}^{2g} \alpha_i^n\) for certain algebraic numbers \(\alpha_i\) of absolute value \(\sqrt{q}\). In fact, \(A(n)=\text{Trace}(F^n)\), where \(F\) is the action of the Frobenius map on the étale cohomology group \(H_{\text{et}}^1(\overline{X},\overline{{\mathbb Q}_l})\) for some prime \(l\not= p\), and \(\overline{X}=X\otimes_{{\mathbb F}_q}\overline{{\mathbb F}_q}\). The authors give a survey, not meant for hard-core specialists, of various existing methods to estimate \(|A(n)|\) from below. From the Skolem-Mahler-Lech theorem for linear recurrence sequences, the authors deduce that \(|A(n)|\to\infty\) as \(n\) runs over all positive integers for which \(A(n)\not= 0\). Using a recent logarithmic forms estimate due to Baker and Wüstholz, the authors show that if \(X =E\) is an ordinary elliptic curve over \({\mathbb F}_q\), then \(|A(n)|\geq (2/\pi )q^{n/2\, - 2^{37}\log (2n)}\) for all \(n\geq 1\). For arbitrary curves \(X\) as above, the authors show by means of Schmidt's subspace theorem, that for every \(\varepsilon >0\) there is (an ineffective) \(C(\varepsilon )>0\) such that for every \(n\), either \(A(n)=0\) or \(|A(n)|>C(\varepsilon )(q^{n/2})^{1-\varepsilon}\). Further they give some sufficient conditions to guarantee that \(A(n)\not= 0\) for all \(n\). The authors give extensions of this result to higher dimensional varieties.