An improvement of the Hasse-Weil-Serre bound for curves over some finite fields (Q405958)

The well known Hasse--Weil bound, equivalent to the Riemann Hypothesis, improved by J. P. Serre, establishes that the number \(N(C)\) of rational points on a curve \(C\) of genus \(g\) defined over \({\mathbb F}_q\) satisfies \(|N(C) -q-1|\leq g[2\sqrt{q}]\). Here a curve over \({\mathbb F}_q\) is an absolutely irreducible nonsingular projective algebraic variety of dimension \(1\) over \({\mathbb F}_q\). The \textit{discriminant} \(d({\mathbb F}_q)\) is defined by \(m^2-4q\), where \(m=[2\sqrt{q}]\). A curve \(C\) of genus \(g\) over a finite field \({\mathbb F}_q\) is called a \textit{maximal} (resp. \textit{minimal}) curve if \(N(C)\) attains the upper (resp. lower) Hasse--Weil--Serre bound: \(q+1\pm g[2\sqrt{q}]\). The main object of this paper is the study of maximal and minimal curves of low genera over fields with discriminant \(d({\mathbb F}_q)\in \{-3,-4,-7,-8\}\). It turns out that such curves are ordinary. The main result of this paper is the following: Theorem. If \(C\) is a curve of genus \(g\) over \({\mathbb F}_q\), then \(|N(C)-q-1|\leq g[2\sqrt{q}]-2\) if \(q\) and \(g\) satisfy: \noindent \(\bullet\;d({\mathbb F}_q)=-3, q\neq 3, 3\leq g \leq 10\) (Theorem 3.2); \noindent \(\bullet\;d({\mathbb F}_q)=-4, q\neq 2, 3\leq g \leq 10\) (Theorem 3.4); \noindent \(\bullet\;d({\mathbb F}_q)=-7, 4\leq g \leq 8\) (Theorem 3.7); \noindent \(\bullet\;d({\mathbb F}_q)=-8, \roman{char}({\mathbb F}_q)\neq 3, 3\leq g \leq 7\) (Theorem 3.9). The method employed by the author is the use of the explicit classification of Hermite lattices by \textit{A. Schiemann} [J. Symb. Comput. 26, No. 4, 487--508 (1998; Zbl 0936.68129)].