Uniform bounds on the number of rational points of a family of curves of genus 2 (Q1773332)

A conjecture made by Lang affirms that if \(X\) is a variety of general type defined over a number field \(K\), the set of the \(K\)-rational points of \(X\) is not Zariski dense. L. Caporaso, J. Harris and B. Mazur have proved in 1997 that if this conjecture is true, then for any integer \(g\geq 2\), there exists an integer \(B(K, g)\), such that any smooth curve defined over \(K\) of genus \(g\) has at most \(B(K, g)\) points rational over \(K\). In this direction, one can find in the literature some results concerning uniform upper bounds on the number of \(\mathbb{Q}\)-rational points of certain families of curves of genus \(\geq 2\). In this paper, the authors obtain uniform upper bounds out the number of \(\mathbb{Q}\)-rational points of the family of curves \((C_t)_{t\in\mathbb{Q}}\) of genus 2 of equation \[ C_t: y^2= x^6+ tx^4+ tx^2+ 1. \] for a certain possibly infinite set of values \(t\in\mathbb{Q}\). Let \(T\) be an indeterminate. The authors start with the determination of the \(\mathbb{Q}(T)\)-rational points of the curve \(C\) of equation \[ y^2= x^6+ Tx^4+ Tx^2+ 1. \] This curve admits two independent morphisms into the elliptic curve \(E/\mathbb{Q}(T)\) of equation \[ y^2 = x^3+ Tx^2+ Tx + 1. \] Using Shioda's theory of Mordell-Weil lattices, they prove that the rank of the group \(E(\mathbb{Q}(T))\) is one and its torsion subgroup is \(\{O,(-1, 0)\}\). Then, they prove that \[ C(\mathbb{Q}(T))= \{(0, 1), (0,-1)\}, \] using a variant of a method which is due to Demyanenko and Manin, in order to find the set of the rational points of a given plane curve. For any \(t\in\mathbb{Q}\), with \(t\neq-1, 3\), let \(E_t\) be the elliptic curve over \(\mathbb{Q}\) deduced from \(E\) by specialization. The authors then determine the set \(C_t(\mathbb{Q})\) for all but finitely many \(t\in\mathbb{Q}\) satisfying the two following conditions: 1) the rank of the group \(E_t(\mathbb{Q})\) is one; 2) The point \((0, 1)\in E_t(\mathbb{Q})\) is a generator of the free part of \(E_t(\mathbb{Q})\). Their result implies that the cardinality of \(C_t(\mathbb{Q})\) is uniformly bounded for all \(t\in\mathbb{Q}\) for which these conditions are realised. Let \(S\) be the set of \(t\in\mathbb{Q}\) such that the first condition is satisfied. Assuming the validity of a height conjecture of Lang, they prove that the cardinality of the set \(C_t(\mathbb{Q})\) is uniformly bounded for all \(t\in S\). They also mention that experimental results seem to show that the set of \(t\in S\) which satisfy also the second condition has density 1 in~\(S\).