V.4.
The Birch–Swinnerton-Dyer Conjecture
theory. To introduce this example of bad behavior, we
first consider an example of good behavior. Suppose
that f : R → R is a reasonable function with f (x)  0
and f (x + 1) = f (x) for all x (thus, f is nonnegative
and periodic with period 1). Suppose that there existed
real numbers s, t, u, v such that
f (x + s) + f (x + t) − f (x + u) − f (x + v)  −1 (1)
1 1
for all x. Since 0 f (x + w) dx = 0 f (x) dx for all w,
integrating both sides of (1) from 0 to 1 would give
1
0 (−1) dx = −1,
0 is finite, but it does not tell us how to calculate it. That
which is impossible. Thus (1) cannot hold.
Now consider the free group [IV.10 §2] G generated
by a and b (that is to say, the group generated by a and
b where no nontrivial relations hold between a and b).
Every element of G can be written in shortest form as
the product of a sequence, each term of which is a, a−1 ,
b, or b−1 . Define F (x) = 1 if x = e or the shortest form
of x ends with a or a−1 , and set F (x) = 0 otherwise.
We see that F (x)  0 for all x ∈ G, and the reader can
check, by going through cases, that
F (xb) + F (xab) − F (xa−1 ) − F (xb−1 a)  −1 (2)
for all x ∈ G. The averaging argument that enabled us
to show that (1) was false for R must fail for G since (2)
is, in fact, true. If there is no averaging argument, then
there can be no appropriate universal integral and no
appropriate universal “volume” in G.
This example bears a clear family resemblance to the
“paradoxes” discussed earlier. If we consider the group
SO(3) of rotations in three dimensions, then (unless
specific conditions hold) there is no nontrivial group
relation between two generally chosen rotations A and
B about two generally chosen axes. Thus SO(3) con-
tains a copy of the group G considered in the previous
paragraph. The Banach–Tarski construction is a mod-
ification of a construction of Hausdorff that exploits
this fact.
There is a beautiful account of all these matters in
The Banach–Tarski Paradox by Stan Wagon (Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1993).
V.4 The Birch–Swinnerton-Dyer
Conjecture
Given an elliptic curve [III.21], there is a natural way
of defining a binary operation on its points, and this
turns the elliptic curve into an abelian group [I.3 §2.1].
Moreover, the points on the curve with rational coordin-
685
ates form a subgroup of this group. Mordell’s theorem
tells us that this subgroup is finitely generated. (These
results are described in rational points on curves
and the mordell conjecture [V.29].)
Every finitely generated Abelian group is isomorphic
to a group of the form Zr × Cn1 × Cn2 × · · · × Cnk , where
Cn stands for the cyclic group with n elements. The
number r , which measures the maximum number of
independent elements of this group that have infinite
order, is called the rank of the elliptic curve. Mordell’s
theorem implies that the rank of every elliptic curve
turns out to be an extraordinarily hard problem: in fact,
so hard that it is considered a remarkable achievement
of Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer even to have come up
with a plausible conjecture about it.
Their conjecture relates the rank of an elliptic curve
to a very different object associated with that curve:
an L-function [III.47]. This is a function with proper-
ties similar to those of the riemann zeta function
[IV.2 §3], but it is defined in terms of a series of num-
bers N2 (E), N3 (E), N5 (E), . . . , one for each prime p; the
number Np (E) is the number of points on the elliptic
curve when it is considered as a curve over the field
[I.3 §2.2] with p elements. One of the properties of the
L-function of E is that it is holomorphic [I.3 §5.6]. (The
fact that it can be extended to a holomorphic func-
tion everywhere on the complex plane is very far from
obvious: it follows from the fact that all elliptic curves
are modular. See fermat’s last theorem [V.10].) Birch
and Swinnerton-Dyer conjectured that the rank of the
group associated with the elliptic curve is equal to the
order of the zero of its L-function at 1. (If the L-function
does not take the value 0 at 1, then this order is defined
to be 0.) This can be thought of as a sophisticated
local-to-global principle [III.51], in that it relates
the rational solutions to the equation for the elliptic
curve to the solutions mod p for each prime p.
Another remarkable feature of the conjecture is that
far less was known about elliptic curves when Birch and
Swinnerton-Dyer made it. Now there are many reasons
to find it plausible, but then it was much more of a
leap in the dark: they based it on numerical evidence
gleaned from computations of Np (E) for several ellip-
tic curves and many primes p. In other words, they did
not calculate the orders of zeros of L-functions of vari-
ous elliptic curves, since that was too hard, but guessed
them based on approximations.
The Birch–Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture has now been
proved for curves with L-functions that have a zero