• Lecture notes for this course can be found HERE (Last update: 11.11.2025).

(Updates: corrected a few typos in Chapter 2. and rephrased slightly the definition of p-adics in Section 3.1.

Comments welcomed!)

• A tentative syllabus for this course can be found HERE.

• The main references are: 

  • Silverman's book on "The Arithmetic of Elliptic Curves" (Link)

  • James Newton's "Lecture notes on Elliptic Curves" (Link).

• Prerequisites: 

  • Strongly recommended: Group theory, Ring theory, basic Galois theory

  • Recommended, but not required: Basic notions from algebraic number theory, algebraic geometry, specifically algebraic curves

Tentative Lectures Schedule:

1. 14th October: (Sun Woo + Diana) Introduction, Crash course on algebraic curves, Group law, & First examples I

Recommended exercises: 1.4, 1.8, 1.9, 1.24.

2. 21st October: (Diana) Group law, First examples II

Recommended exercises: 1.33, 1.34, 1.35, 1.36, 1.38.

3. 28th October: (Sun Woo) Crash course on function fields + Isogenies I (up to Example 1.51 & Remark 1.52)

Recommended exercises: 1.43, 1.47, 1.48

4. 4th November: (Sun Woo) Isogenies II (from Theorem 1.53)

Recommended exercises: 1.54, 1.59, 1.61, 1.65

5. 11th November: (Diana) Elliptic curves over finite fields + Crash course in p-adics (up to Remark 3.5.)

Recommended exercises: 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.6 (harder), 2.13 

6. 18th November: (Sun Woo) Crash course in p-adics (& possibly Elliptic curves over local fields)

7. 25th November: (Diana) Elliptic curves over local fields II: Minimal Weierstrass equations, places of good and bad reduction, finite order

8. 2nd December: (Sun Woo) Elliptic curves over global fields I: Torsion + Weak Mordell-Weil (+ Student Evaluations at the end of the course)

9. 9th December: (Diana) Elliptic curves over global fields II: Heights + Mordell-Weil Theorem

10. 16th December: (Diana) Elliptic curves over global fields III: Explicit 2-Descent OR Magma / Survey on ranks

11. 23rd December: (Sun Woo) Exercises & Review (Tentative)

12. 13th January: (TBD) Elliptic curves over global fields IV: Explicit 2-Descent OR Magma / Survey on ranks

13. 20th January: (TBD) Selected topics I

14. 27th January: (TBD) Selected topics II

15. 3rd February: (TBD) Selected topics III