Distribution of elliptic twin primes in isogeny and isomorphism classes (Q2637447)

Let \(q\) be a prime power with \(\gcd(q, 6) = 1\) and \(\mathbb F_q\) a field with \(q\) elements. We denote by \(E\) an elliptic curve given by the equation \(y^2z = x^3 + axz^2 + bz^3\) with discriminant \(4a^3 + 27b^2 \neq 0\) and by \(\bar{E}\) its quadratic twist given by the equation \(\lambda y^2z = x^3 + axz^2 + bz^3\), where \(\lambda \in \mathbb F_q\) is a quadratic non-residue. The well known Hasse bound gives \(\#E(\mathbb F_q) = q + 1-t\) and \(\#\bar{E}(\mathbb F_q) = q + 1 + t\). By a result of \textit{M. Deuring} [Abh. Math. Semin. Univ. Hamb. 14, 197--272 (1941; Zbl 0025.02003; JFM 67.0107.01)], for any prime \(p\) and integer \(t \in [-2\sqrt{p}, 2\sqrt{p} ]\) there is an elliptic curve \(E\) over \(\mathbb F_p\) satisfying the above equalities. It has been shown that elliptic curves \(E\) for which the numbers \(\#E(\mathbb F_q)\) and \(\#\bar{E}(\mathbb F_q)\) are primes can be used in key exchange protocols, for designing randomness extractors and cryptographic hash functions and in other cryptographic applications. We call a pair \((\ell, r)\) of primes \textit{elliptic twins}, if for some prime power \(q\) with \(\gcd(q, 6) = 1\) and an integer \(t \in [-2\sqrt{q}, 2\sqrt{q}]\) we have \(\ell = q + 1 - t\) and \(r = q + 1 + t\). We denote by \(W(x)\) the total number of pairs \((q, t)\), where \(q \leq x\) is a prime power and \(t \in [-2\sqrt{q}, 2\sqrt{q}]\) is an integer such that \(q + 1 - t\) and \(q + 1 + t\) are primes. Since two elliptic curves \(E_1\) and \(E_2\) are isogenous over \(\mathbb F_q\) if and only if \(\#E_1(\mathbb F_q) = \#E_2(\mathbb F_q)\), we see that the quantity \(W(x)\) counts the number of isogeny classes of all elliptic curves over all finite fields of \(q \leq x\) elements that correspond to twin primes. In [\textit{J. B. Friedlander} and the first author, Lect. Notes Comput. Sci. 5557, 77--81 (2009; Zbl 1248.94067)] it is shown, assuming a rather uniform version of the Bateman-Horn conjecture, that \[ W(x) \sim \gamma \frac{x^{3/2}}{(\log x)^3}, \] where \(\gamma\) is an explicit constant. We denote by \(Q(q)\) the number of isomorphism classes \({\mathcal{E}}_q\) of elliptic curves over \(\mathbb F_q\) such that for any curve \(E \in {\mathcal{E}}_q\) both \(\#E(\mathbb F_q)\) and \(\#E(\mathbb F_q)\) are prime and we set \[ U(x) = \sum_{q\leq x} U(q), \] where \(q\) run over the prime powers \(\leq x\). In this paper, under some reasonable heuristic conditions, it is proved that \[ U(x) \sim \Gamma \frac{x^2}{(\log x)^3}, \] for some explicit constant \(\Gamma > 0\). The same approach is used to give another proof of above estimate for \(W(x)\) based on different heuristic arguments. Finally, a comparison of the above asymptotic formulas with the observed values of \(W(x)\) and \(U(x)\) is given.