Computing the height of volcanoes of \(\ell \)-isogenies of elliptic curves over finite fields (Q2474858)

Let \(E\) be an elliptic curve defined over the finite field \(\mathbb {F}_q\) of characteristic \(p\geq 5\), and let \(\ell\) be an odd prime number different from \(p\). Consider a graph that has as nodes the isomorphism classes of curves isogenous to \(E\), and as edges rational isogenies of degree \(\ell\). The volcano of \(\ell\)-isogenies of \(E\) is the connected component of this graph that contains \(E\) as a node. This structure was introduced by \textit{D. Kohel} in his thesis [Endomorphism rings of elliptic curves over finite fields. Ph. D. thesis, Univ. California, Berkeley (1996)], and further studied by [\textit{M. Fouquet} and \textit{F. Morain}, in: Algorithmic number theory. 5th international symposium, ANTS-V, Sydney, Australia, July 7--12, 2002. Proceedings. Berlin: Springer. Lect. Notes Comput. Sci. 2369, 276--291 (2002; Zbl 1058.11041)]. The height of the volcano is an invariant of the graph that coincides with the \(\ell\)-adic valuation \(v_{\ell}(f)\) of the conductor \(f\) of the order \(\mathbb{Z}[\pi]\) in the quadratic field \(\text{End}(E)\otimes_{\mathbb{Z}}\mathbb{Q}\), where \(\pi\) is the Frobenius endomorphism. Let \(r\) be the order of \(q\) in the cyclic group \(\mathbb{F}_{\ell}^*\). In the paper under review the authors relate the value of this height to \(v_{\ell}(q-1)\), \(v_{\ell}(q^r-1)\), \(v_{\ell}(| E(\mathbb {F}_q)| )\), \(v_{\ell}(| E(\mathbb {F}_{q^r})| )\) and \(v_{\ell}(2(q^r-1)-| E(\mathbb {F}_{q^r})| )\). As a consequence, they present an algorithm to compute the height of a volcano, based in the computation of the structure of the \(\ell\)-Sylow subgroup of \(E(\mathbb {F}_q)\) and \(E(\mathbb {F}_{q^r})\).