Explicit points on the Legendre curve (Q2637184)

In this paper under review, the author studies an explicit construction of points of the curve given by \(y^2=x(x+1)(x+t)\) (an obvious twist of the ``Legendre curve'' \(y^2=x(x-1)(x-t)\)) over the characteristic \(p\) function fields \(K_d=\mathbb F_p(\mu_d, \root d\of t)\) where \(d=p^f+1\). (It seems that \(p\not=2\).) There are several constructions of elliptic curves of large rank over \(\mathbb F_p(t)\) or \(\bar{\mathbb F}_p(t)\) (see for instance [\textit{J. T. Tate} and \textit{I. R. Shafarevich}, Sov. Math., Dokl. 8, 917--920 (1967); translation from Dokl. Akad. Nauk SSSR 175, 770--773 (1967; Zbl 0168.42201)]) most of which use the theory of algebraic surfaces, cohomology, \(L\)-functions of varieties, and so on. The strength of this paper is that it provides an explicit elementary construction of points on the mentioned curve. Another noteworthy result is that the order of Shafarevich-Tate group of the Legendre curve over \(K_d\) is given by the square of the index of the group generated by the constructed points inside the Mordell-Weil group \(E(K_d)\) (which is incidentally a power of the prime \(p\)). The similarity with the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture is unmistakable.