Non-CM elliptic curves with infinitely many almost prime Frobenius traces (Q6166732)

Let \(E/\mathbb{Q}\) be an elliptic curve without complex multiplication. Given a prime of good reduction \(p\), let \(a_p(E)\) be the Frobenius trace. In this paper, the authors study the problem of understanding for how many primes \(p\), \(|a_p(E)|\) is prime or it has a small number of prime divisors. It is conjectured that the cardinality of primes \(p< x\) such that \(|a_p(E)|\) is prime grows as \(C(E)\cdot x/(\log x)^2\), where \(C(E)\) is a constant that can be defined explicitly. In the paper, the authors prove the following results. \begin{itemize} \item Assuming GRH, the number of primes \(p<x\) such that \(|a_p(E)|\) is prime is bounded above by \(C_1(E)\cdot x/(\log x)^2\). \item Assuming GRH, the number of primes \(p<x\) such that \(|a_p(E)|\) is the product of at most 4 distinct primes, counted without multiplicity, is bounded below by \(C_2(E)\cdot x/(\log x)^2\). \item Assuming GRH, the number of primes \(p<x\) such that \(|a_p(E)|\) is the product of at most \(5\) distinct primes, counted with multiplicity, is bounded below by \(C_3(E)\cdot x/(\log x)^2\). \item Assuming GRH, Artin's Holomorphy Conjecture, and a Pair Correlation Conjecture for Artin \(L\)-functions, the number of primes \(p<x\) such that \(|a_p(E)|\) is the product of at most \(2\) distinct primes, counted with multiplicity, is bounded below by \(C_4(E)\cdot x/(\log x)^2\). \end{itemize} The constants \(C_1(E)\), \(C_2(E)\), \(C_3(E)\), \(C_4(E)\) can be defined as the product of \(C(E)\) times an explicit constant.