Superspecial curves of genus $4$ in small characteristic

TL;DR

This paper thoroughly investigates superspecial curves of genus 4 in small characteristic, proving their non-existence in characteristic 7 and providing algorithms for enumeration in other cases, with implications for maximal curves over finite fields.

Contribution

It establishes the non-existence of superspecial genus 4 curves in characteristic 7 and offers an algorithm for enumerating superspecial nonhyperelliptic curves in any characteristic p ≥ 5.

Findings

No superspecial genus 4 curves in characteristic 7.

Re-proves uniqueness of maximal curves over _{25}.

Provides an algorithm for enumerating superspecial curves.

Abstract

This paper contains a complete study of superspecial curves of genus $4$ in characteristic $p\le 7$. We prove that there does not exist a superspecial curve of genus $4$ in characteristic $7$. This is a negative answer to the genus $4$ case of the problem proposed by Ekedahl [9] in 1987. This implies the non-existence of maximal curve of genus $4$ over $\mathbb{F}_{49}$, which updates the table at {\tt manypoints.org}. We give an algorithm to enumerate superspecial nonhyperelliptic curves in arbitrary $p \ge 5$, and for $p\le 7$ we excute it with our implementation on a computer algebra system Magma. Our result in $p=5$ re-proves the uniqueness of maximal curves of genus $4$ over $\mathbb{F}_{25}$, see [11] for the original theoretical proof. In Appendix, we present a general method determining Hasse-Witt matrices of curves which are complete intersections.