On the behaviour of root numbers in families of elliptic curves

By considering a one-parameter family of elliptic curves defined over $\mathbb{Q}$, we might ask ourselves if there is any bias in the distribution (or parity) of the root numbers at each specialization. From the work of Helfgott, we know (at least conjecturally) that the average root number of an elliptic curve defined over $\mathbb{Q}(T)$ is zero as soon as there is a place of multiplicative reduction over $\mathbb{Q}(T)$ other than $-$deg. Recently, Helfgott's work was ext...

Let E be a one-parameter family of elliptic curves over a number field. It is natural to expect the average root number of the curves in the family to be zero. All known counterexamples to this folk conjecture occur for families obeying a certain degeneracy condition. We prove that the average root number is zero for a large class of families of elliptic curves of fairly general type. Furthermore, we show that any non-degenerate family E has average root number 0, provided th...

We consider the problem of finding $1$-parameter families of elliptic curves whose root number does not average to zero as the parameter varies in $\mathbb{Z}$. We classify all such families when the degree of the coefficients (in the parameter $t$) is less than or equal to $2$ and we compute the rank over $\mathbb{Q}(t)$ of all these families. Also, we compute explicitly the average of the root numbers for some of these families highlighting some special cases. Finally, we p...

We show the density of rational points on non-isotrivial elliptic surfaces by studying the variation of the root numbers among the fibers of these surfaces, conditionally to two analytic number theory conjectures (the squarefree conjecture and Chowla's conjecture). This is a weaker statement than the one found in a preprint of Helfgott which proves (under the same assumptions) that the average root number is $0$ when the surface admits a place of multiplicative reduction. How...

We give an explicit description of the behaviour of the root number in the family given by twists of an elliptic curve $E$ by the rational values of a polynomial $f(T)$. In particular, we give a criterion (on $f$ depending on $E$) for the family to have a constant root number over $\mathbb{Q}$. This completes a work of Rohrlich: we detail the behaviour of the root number when $E$ has bad reduction over $\mathbb{Q}^{ab}$ and we treat the cases $j(E)=0,1728$ which were not cons...

In a previous article, the author proves that the value of the root number varies in a non-isotrivial family of elliptic curves indexed by one parameter $t$ running through $\mathbb{Q}$. However, a well-known example of Washington has root number $-1$ for every fiber when $t$ runs through $\mathbb{Z}$. Such examples are rare since, as proven in this paper, the root number of the integer fibers varies for a large class of families of elliptic curves. Our results depends on the...

We prove asymptotic formulas for cyclicity of reductions of elliptic curves over the rationals in a family of curves having specified torsion. These results agree with established conditional results and with average results taken over larger families. As a key tool, we prove an analogue of a result of Vl\u{a}du\c{t} that estimates the number of elliptic curves over a finite field with a specified torsion point and cyclic group structure.

The parity of the analytic rank of an elliptic curve is given by the root number in the functional equation L(E,s). Fixing an elliptic curve over any number field and considering the family of its quadratic twists, it is natural to ask what the average analytic rank in this family is. A lower bound on this number is given by the average root number. In this paper, we investigate the root number in such families and derive an asymptotic formula for the proportion of curves in ...

We study the low-lying zeros of various interesting families of elliptic curve L-functions. One application is an upper bound on the average analytic rank of the family of all elliptic curves. The upper bound obtained is less than two, which implies that a positive proportion of elliptic curves over the rationals have algebraic rank equal to analytic rank and finite Tate-Shafarevich group. These results are conditional on the Generalized Riemann Hypothesis.

We generalize a theorem of D. Rohrlich concerning root numbers of elliptic curves over the field of rational numbers. Our result applies to curves of all higher genera over number fields. Namely, under certain conditions which naturally extend the conditions used by D. Rohrlich, we show that the root number associated to a smooth projective curve over a number field F and a complex finite-dimensional irreducible representation of the absolute Galois group of F with real-value...