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Michael E. Zieve

Publications and source records attributed to Michael E. Zieve.

51 records · Page 3Linked to original sources
arXiv2008

Nonisomorphic curves that become isomorphic over extensions of coprime degrees

We show that one can find two nonisomorphic curves over a field K that become isomorphic to one another over two finite extensions of K whose degrees over K are coprime to one another. More specifically, let K_0 be an arbitrary prime field and let r and s be integers greater than 1 that are coprime to one another. We show that one can find a finite extension K of K_0, a degree-r extension L of K, a degree-s extension M of K, and two curves C and D over K such that C and D become isomorphic to one another over L and over M, but not over any proper subextensions of L/K or M/K. We show that such C and D can never have genus 0, and that if K is finite, C and D can have genus 1 if and only if {r,s} = {2,3} and K is an odd-degree extension of F_3. On the other hand, when {r,s}={2,3} we show that genus-2 examples occur in every characteristic other than 3. Our detailed analysis of the case {r,s} = {2,3} shows that over every finite field K there exist nonisomorphic curves C and D that become isomorphic to one another over the quadratic and cubic extensions of K. Most of our proofs rely on Galois cohomology. Without using Galois cohomology, we show that two nonisomorphic genus-0 curves over an arbitrary field remain nonisomorphic over every odd-degree extension of the base field.

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arXiv2008

Polynomials with PSL(2) monodromy

Let K be a field of characteristic p>0, and let q be a power of p. We determine all polynomials f in K[t]\K[t^p] of degree q(q-1)/2 such that the Galois group of f(t)-u over K(u) has a transitive normal subgroup isomorphic to PSL_2(q), subject to a certain ramification hypothesis. As a consequence, we describe all polynomials f in K[t], of degree not a power of p, such that f is functionally indecomposable over K but f decomposes over an extension of K. Moreover, except for one ramification setup (which is treated in the companion paper arxiv:0707.1837), we describe all indecomposable polynomials f in K[t] of non-p-power degree which are exceptional, in the sense that x-y is the only absolutely irreducible factor of f(x)-f(y) which lies in K[x,y]. It is known that, when K is finite, a polynomial f is exceptional if and only if it induces a bijection on infinitely many finite extensions of K.

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arXiv2008

A new family of exceptional polynomials in characteristic two

We produce a new family of polynomials f(x) over fields K of characteristic 2 which are exceptional, in the sense that f(x)-f(y) has no absolutely irreducible factors in K[x,y] besides the scalar multiples of x-y; when K is finite, this condition is equivalent to saying there are infinitely many finite extensions L/K for which the map c --> f(c) is bijective on L. Our polynomials have degree (2^e-1)*2^(e-1), where e is odd. Combined with our previous paper arxiv:0707.1835, this completes the classification of indecomposable exceptional polynomials of degree not a power of the characteristic. The strategy of our proof is to identify the curves that can arise as the Galois closure of the branched cover P^1 --> P^1 induced by an exceptional polynomial f. In this case, the curves turn out to be x^(q+1)+y^(q+1)=a+T(xy), where T(z)=z^(q/2)+z^(q/4)+...+z. Our proofs rely on new properties of ramification in Galois covers of curves, as well as the computation of the automorphism groups of all curves in a certain 2-parameter family.

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arXiv2008

Polynomials with a common composite

Let f and g be nonconstant polynomials over an arbitrary field K. In this paper we study the intersection of the polynomial rings K[f] and K[g], and in particular we ask whether this intersection is larger than K. We completely resolve this question when K has characteristic zero, and in positive characteristic we present various results, examples, and algorithms.

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arXiv2007

Decompositions of Laurent polynomials

In the 1920's, Ritt studied the operation of functional composition g o h(x) = g(h(x)) on complex rational functions. In the case of polynomials, he described all the ways in which a polynomial can have multiple `prime factorizations' with respect to this operation. Despite significant effort by Ritt and others, little progress has been made towards solving the analogous problem for rational functions. In this paper we use results of Avanzi--Zannier and Bilu--Tichy to prove analogues of Ritt's results for decompositions of Laurent polynomials, i.e., rational functions with denominator a power of x.

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arXiv2007

Nonexistence of permutation binomials of certain shapes

Suppose x^m + c*x^n is a permutation polynomial over GF(p), where p>5 is prime, m>n>0, and c is in GF(p)^*. We prove that gcd(m-n,p-1) is not 2 or 4. In the special case that either (p-1)/2 or (p-1)/4 is prime, this was conjectured in a recent paper by Masuda, Panario and Wang.

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arXiv2007

On some permutation polynomials over F_q of the form x^r*h(x^((q-1)/d)))

In a recent paper, Akbary and Wang gave a sufficient condition for x^u + x^r to permute GF(q), in terms of the period of a certain sequence involving sums of cosines. As an application they gave necessary and sufficient conditions in case u,r,q satisfy certain special properties. We show that the Akbary-Wang sufficient condition follows from a more general sufficient condition which does not involve sums of cosines. This leads to vastly simpler proofs of the Akbary-Wang results, as well as generalizations to polynomials of the form x^r*h(x^{(q-1)/d}).

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arXiv2007

Some families of permutation polynomials over finite fields

We give necessary and sufficient conditions for a polynomial of the form x^r*(1+x^v+x^(2v)+...+x^(kv))^t to permute the elements of the finite field GF(q). Our results yield especially simple criteria in case (q-1)/gcd(q-1,v) is a small prime.

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arXiv2007

Rational functions with linear relations

We find all polynomials f,g,h over a field K such that g and h are linear and f(g(x))=h(f(x)). We also solve the same problem for rational functions f,g,h, in case the field K is algebraically closed.

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arXiv2007

Exceptional covers and bijections on rational points

We show that if f: X --> Y is a finite, separable morphism of smooth curves defined over a finite field F_q, where q is larger than an explicit constant depending only on the degree of f and the genus of X, then f maps X(F_q) surjectively onto Y(F_q) if and only if f maps X(F_q) injectively into Y(F_q). Surprisingly, the bounds on q for these two implications have different orders of magnitude. The main tools used in our proof are the Chebotarev density theorem for covers of curves over finite fields, the Castelnuovo genus inequality, and ideas from Galois theory.

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arXiv2002

Curves of every genus with many points, II: Asymptotically good families

We resolve a 1983 question of Serre by constructing curves with many points of every genus over every finite field. More precisely, we show that for every prime power q there is a positive constant c_q with the following property: for every non-negative integer g, there is a genus-g curve over F_q with at least c_q * g rational points over F_q. Moreover, we show that there exists a positive constant d such that for every q we can choose c_q = d * (log q). We show also that there is a constant c > 0 such that for every q and every n > 0, and for every sufficiently large g, there is a genus-g curve over F_q that has at least c*g/n rational points and whose Jacobian contains a subgroup of rational points isomorphic to (Z/nZ)^r for some r > c*g/n.

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arXiv2001

Curves of every genus with many points, I: Abelian and toric families

Let N_q(g) denote the maximal number of F_q-rational points on any curve of genus g over the finite field F_q. Ihara (for square q) and Serre (for general q) proved that limsup_{g-->infinity} N_q(g)/g > 0 for any fixed q. In their proofs they constructed curves with many points in infinitely many genera; however, their sequences of genera are somewhat sparse. In this paper, we prove that lim_{g-->infinity} N_q(g) = infinity. More precisely, we use abelian covers of P^1 to prove that liminf_{g-->infinity} N_q(g)/(g/log g) > 0, and we use curves on toric surfaces to prove that liminf_{g-->infty} N_q(g)/g^{1/3} > 0; we also show that these results are the best possible that can be proved with these families of curves.

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arXiv2001

Polynomial Mappings mod p^n

Let f(x) be a polynomial with integer coefficients, let n be a positive integer, and let p be an odd prime. Then the mapping x-->f(x) sends Z/p^n into Z/p^n. We study the topological structure of this mapping.

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arXiv2000

On the genera of X_0(N)

Let g_0(N) be the genus of the modular curve X_0(N). We record several properties of the sequence {g_0(N)}. Even though the average size of g_0(N) is 1.25N/pi^2, a random positive integer has probability zero of being a value of g_0(N). Also, if N is a random positive integer then g_0(N) is odd with probability one. The smallest non-negative integer not occuring as g_0(N) for any N is 150; the smallest such odd integer is 49267.

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