Some estimates from étale cohomology.
We perform descent calculations for the families of elliptic curves over with a rational point of order or 7. These calculations give an estimate for the Mordell-Weil rank which we relate to the parity conjecture. We exhibit explicit elements of the Tate-Shafarevich group of order 5 and 7, and show that the 5-torsion of the Tate-Shafarevich group of an elliptic curve over may become arbitrarily large.
We recall some basic constructions from -adic Hodge theory, then describe some recent results in the subject. We chiefly discuss the notion of -pairs, introduced recently by Berger, which provides a natural enlargement of the category of -adic Galois representations. (This enlargement, in a different form, figures in recent work of Colmez, Bellaïche, and Chenevier on trianguline representations.) We also discuss results of Liu that indicate that the formalism of Galois cohomology, including Tate...
Brion proved that the valuation cone of a complex spherical variety is a fundamental domain for a finite reflection group, called the little Weyl group. The principal goal of this paper is to generalize this theorem to fields of characteristic unequal to 2. We also prove a weaker version which holds in characteristic 2, as well. Our main tool is a generalization of Akhiezer’s classification of spherical varieties of rank 1.