A type of hyperelliptic continued fraction

T.G.Berry

Abstract

Based on hints of Tschebychev, a continued fraction is described which gives an effective algorithm for calculating the torsion, if finite, of divisors D-D- on a hyperelliptic curve of genus > 1, where D is an effective divisor of degree 2 and D- denotes the image of D under the hyperelliptic involution. The difficulties involved in extending the algorithm to divisors of degree > 2 are briefly discussed.

AMS 2000 subject classification: 14Q05, 11Y55. Keywords: hyperelliptic curve, torsion divisor, continued fraction.




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On 16 Apr 2004, 14:01.