Polynomial bounds for Arakelov invariants of Belyi curves

Abstract

We explicitly bound the Faltings height of a curve over Q polynomially in its Belyi degree. Similar bounds are proven for three other Arakelov invariants: the discriminant, Faltings' delta invariant and the self-intersection of the dualizing sheaf. Our results allow us to explicitly bound Arakelov invariants of modular curves, Hurwitz curves and Fermat curves in terms of their genus. Moreover, as an application, we show that the Couveignes-Edixhoven-Bruin algorithm to compute coefficients of modular forms for congruence subgroups of SL2(Z) runs in polynomial time under the Riemann hypothesis for zeta-functions of number fields. This was known before only for certain congruence subgroups. Finally, we use our results to prove a conjecture of Edixhoven, de Jong and Schepers on the Faltings height of a cover of the projective line with fixed branch locus. Our proof uses Merkl's method for bounding Arakelov-Green's functions to deal with archimedean contributions. In the appendix, Peter Bruin proves an explicit version of Merkl's results.