Quadratic twists of tiling number elliptic curves

TL;DR

This paper investigates the relationship between tiling numbers and elliptic curves, using advanced number theory techniques to analyze the parity of the Shafarevich-Tate group and Selmer groups, revealing new distribution phenomena among residue classes.

Contribution

It establishes a link between tiling numbers and elliptic curves' arithmetic, providing explicit formulas for the parity of the analytic Sha and Selmer groups for specific residue classes, and uncovers new distribution phenomena.

Findings

Parity of analytic Sha is equivalent to trivial Selmer group for certain residue classes.

The density of n with both elliptic curves having odd analytic Sha differs among residue classes.

Shows non-tiling behavior for a positive proportion of n in specific residue classes.

Abstract

A positive integer $n$ is called a tiling number if the equilateral triangle can be dissected into $nk^2$ congruent triangles for some integer $k$. An integer $n>3$ is tiling number if and only if at least one of the elliptic curves $E^{(\pm n)}:\pm ny^2=x(x-1)(x+3)$ has positive Mordell-Weil rank. Let $A$ denote one of the two curves. In this paper, using Waldspurger formula and an induction method, for $n\equiv 3,7\mod 24$ positive square-free, as well as some other residue classes, we express the parity of analytic Sha of $A$ in terms of the genus number $g(m):=\#2\mathrm{Cl}(\mathbb{Q}(\sqrt{-m}))$ as $m$ runs over factors of $n$. Together with $2$-descent method which express $\mathrm{dim}_{\mathbb{F}_2}\mathrm{Sel}_2(A/\mathbb{Q})/A[2]$ in terms of the corank of a matrix of $\mathbb{F}_2$-coefficients, we show that for $n\equiv 3,7\mod 24$ positive square-free, the analytic Sha of $A$ being odd is equivalent to that $\mathrm{Sel}_2(A/\mathbb{Q})/A[2]$ being trivial, as predicted by the BSD conjecture. We also show that, among the residue classes $3$, resp. $7\mod 24$, the subset of $n$ such that both of $E^{(n)}$ and $E^{(-n)}$ have analytic Sha odd is of limit density $0.288\cdots$ and $0.144\cdots$, respectively, in particular, they are non-tiling numbers. This exhibits two new phenomena on tiling number elliptic curves: firstly, the limit density is different from the general phenomenon on elliptic curves predicted by Bhargava-Kane-Lenstra-Poonen-Rains; secondly, the joint distribution has different behavior among different residue classes.