Rational points of a curve which has a nontrivial automorphism
Let be a compact subanalytic surface. This paper shows that, in a suitable sense, there are very few rational points of that do not lie on some connected semialgebraic curve contained in .
This is an extended version of an invited lecture I gave at the Journées Arithmétiques in St. Étienne in July 2009.We discuss the state of the art regarding the problem of finding the set of rational points on a (smooth projective) geometrically integral curve over . The focus is on practical aspects of this problem in the case that the genus of is at least , and therefore the set of rational points is finite.
The rational points on in the case where is a composite number are considered. A computational study of some of the cases not covered by the results of Momose is given. Exceptional rational points are found in the cases and and the -invariants of the corresponding quadratic -curves are exhibited.