CM points on Shimura curves via QM-equivariant isogeny volcanoes
Abstract.
We study CM points on the Shimura curves and , parametrizing abelian surfaces with quaternionic multiplication and extra level structure. A description of the locus of points with CM by a specified order is obtained for general level, via an isogeny-volcano approach in analogy to work of Clark and Clark–Saia in the case of modular curves. This allows for a count of all points with CM by a specified order on such a curve, and a determination of all primitive residue fields and primitive degrees of such points on . We leverage computations of least degrees towards the existence of sporadic CM points on .
1. Introduction
The restriction of the study of torsion of elliptic curves over number fields to the case of complex multiplication (CM) has seen considerable recent progress. In particular, work of Clark and Clark–Saia [Cl22, CS22], continuing a program of research in this area from the perspective of CM points on modular curves (see, e.g., [CCS13, BC20, CGPS22]), approaches the study of the CM locus on the modular curves and via a study of CM components of isogeny graphs of elliptic curves over . For an imaginary quadratic field and the discriminant of the order of conductor in , let denote the closed point corresponding to elliptic curves with CM by the order of discriminant . The work of [Cl22, CS22] results, for instance, in a description of all points in the fiber of the natural map over . This description provides the list of residue fields of -CM points on the first curve, along with a count of closed points in this fiber with each specified residue field.
In this paper, we study the Shimura curves and parametrizing abelian surfaces with quaternionic multiplication (QM) by the indefinite quaternion algebra over of discriminant , along with certain specified level structure. Our main result allows for a similar description of the CM loci on these curves.
In particular, we show that if has CM by the order of conductor in the imaginary quadratic field , then the residue field is either a ring class field for some with , or is isomorphic to an index subfield of such a field . The ramification index of with respect to the natural map from to is always when the CM order has discriminant . In general, this index is at most . The work of this paper culminates in a determination of the residue fields and ramification indices of all CM points on , and putting together the casework based on the quaternion discriminant, level and CM order gives a result of the following form.
Theorem 1.1.
There exists an algorithm which, given as input
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an indefinite quaternion discriminant over ,
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a positive integer coprime to and
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an imaginary quadratic discriminant ,
returns as output the complete list of tuples , consisting of
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a boolean is_fixed,
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a positive integer (necessarily with ),
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an integer and
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a positive integer
such that there exist exactly closed -CM points on with the following properties:
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the residue field of over is , the ring class field of conductor associated to ,
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if is_fixed is False,
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•
if is_fixed is True and
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has ramification index with respect to the natural map to .
This algorithm, outlined in Algorithm 8.2, has been implemented, and is publicly available at [Rep] along with [Magma] code for all other computations described in this paper.
The outline towards developing this algorithm is as follows: in §2 we provide relevant background and prior results on CM points on the Shimura curves of interest. This includes results on concrete decompositions of QM abelian surfaces with CM as products of CM elliptic curves. The main result here is Theorem 2.13. In §3 and §4, we then consider QM-equivariant isogenies and the QM-equivariant -isogeny graph . We prove in Theorem 4.5 that a CM component of this graph for a prime and quaternion discriminant has the structure of an -volcano for CM discriminant . We handle the slight deviation from the structure of an -volcano in the case in Proposition 5.3.
We study the action of on such components in §5, allowing for an enumeration of closed point equivalence classes of paths in these graphs and hence a description the CM locus on a prime-power level Shimura curve as provided in §6. The algebraic results of §7 then feed into a description of the CM locus on for general level coprime to provided in §8, which provides the algorithm mentioned in Theorem 1.1.
The ability to transition to information about the -CM locus on is explained in §9, in which we prove the following result. While this does not determine the list of residue fields of CM points on in the vein of Theorem 1.1, it allows us to count all CM points on of specified degree and list their corresponding CM orders. Otherwise put, this is enough data to determine, for a fixed discriminant and degree , all levels such that there exists a QM abelian surface and a torsion point of order such that the induced point has residue field of degree .
Theorem 1.2.
Suppose that is a point with CM by the imaginary quadratic order of discriminant . Let and denote the natural morphisms. The following hold:
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(1)
The scheme-theoretic fiber of over consists of a single closed point.
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(2)
If any of the following hold:
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,
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is ramified with respect to or
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,
then is unramified over .
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•
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(3)
If and is unramified with respect to , then in the case we have
for the ramification index and residue degree of , respectively, with respect to .
We define a primitive residue field (respectively, a primitive degree) of an -CM point on to be one that does not properly contain (respectively, does not properly divide) that of another -CM point on the same curve. Our work allows for a determination of all primitive residue fields and primitive degrees of -CM points on , as discussed in §8.4. An abridged version of our main result on primitive residue fields and degrees is as follows, with Theorem 8.3 providing the complete result:
Theorem 1.3.
Suppose that splits , let be a positive integer, and let be a positive integer relatively prime to with prime-power factorization . One of the following occurs:
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(1)
There is a unique primitive residue field of -CM points on , with an index , totally complex subfield of a ring class field for some .
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(2)
There are exactly primitive residue fields of such points, with one of the same form as in part (1) and the other being a ring class field of the form with and .
Knowledge of all primitive degrees provides the ability to compute the least degree of an -CM point on for any imaginary quadratic order . In §10, we discuss minimizing over orders to compute the least degree of a CM point on , and Proposition 10.1 allows one to transition from this to computations of least degrees of CM points on .
A closed point on a curve is said to be sporadic if there are finitely many points on with . We apply our least degree computations towards the existence of sporadic CM points on with the following end result (see Theorem 10.9).
Theorem 1.4.
Let be the set of all pairs appearing in Table 1 or Table LABEL:table:unknowns_table. If consists of a quaternion discriminant over and a positive integer which is relatively prime to , then has a sporadic CM point. If is such a pair with
then has a sporadic CM point.
The appearance of the pair in this result comes down to the fact that while has a sporadic CM point of degree , the curve has as the least degree of a CM point. See Theorem 10.9 (4) for details.
Our work determining residue fields of CM points on can be viewed as a generalization of prior work on the Diophantine arithmetic of Shimura curves via an alternate approach (specifically work of Jordan [Jor81] and González–Rotger [GR06] – see Theorem 2.8). Of course, our results are aimed towards better understanding the torsion of low-dimensional abelian varieties over number fields, via restriction to a case with extra structure. On this point, the question of which number fields admit abelian surfaces with certain specified rational torsion subgroups is closely related to our results, just as in the classical modular curve case. A result of Jordan (see Theorem 2.6) clarifies this relationship.
Unlike the modular curves , the curves for have no cusps. For this reason, understanding the CM points on Shimura curves may be of even greater interest, as they provide the most accessible examples of low-degree points and could afford techniques (see, e.g., [BT07]) for computing models in the absence of techniques involving expansions around cusps.
Additionally, while our approach is in analogy to that of [Cl22] and [CS22] in the modular curve case, there are interesting deviations arising in this work due to technical differences in the case. Namely, while the field of moduli of any CM point has a real embedding, a result of Shimura [Sh75, Thm. 0] states that has no real points for . This fact also opens the door for the potential of Hasse principle violations by Shimura curves, which has been a subject of significant study (see, e.g., [Cl09, CSt18, RSY05, SS16]). If one aims to study the Hasse principle for Shimura curves over some fixed number field (respectively, over a fixed degree), then studying the CM points rational over that field (respectively, over number fields of that degree) seems to be a natural initial point of investigation, and so our results may be of interest in that direction.
Acknowledgments
We thank Pete L. Clark for initially suggesting this project, which served as the author’s main Ph.D. thesis work. We are very grateful for Clark’s excellent advising, and for innumerable helpful conversations. We also thank Dino Lorenzini, Oana Padurariu, Ciaran Schembri and John Voight for helpful comments and encouragement. Much gratitude goes as well to the anonymous referee for a careful reading of, and detailed feedback on, earlier versions of this work. This feedback led to many expository and mathematical improvements, including a strengthening of our results on sporadic points.
We would also like to thank the Simons Foundation for access to the [Magma] computational algebra system, with which all computations described in this paper were performed, as well as the Georgia Advanced Computing Resource Center at the University of Georgia for access to the high-performance computing cluster, which we used for various computations described in §10. Partial support for the author was provided by the Research and Training Group grant DMS-1344994 funded by the National Science Foundation.
2. Background
2.1. Shimura curves
The main source here is the foundational work of Shimura [Sh67], while for the background material on quaternion algebras and quaternion orders we recommend the classic [Vig80] as well as the modern treatment in [Voi21]. Throughout, we let denote the indefinite quaternion algebra of discriminant over . We denote by an isomorphism
As is indefinite, the discriminant is the product of an even number of distinct rational primes, namely those at which is ramified. We will let denote a maximal order in , which is unique up to conjugation. We will also fix, following [Voi21, §43.1], an element , satisfying , which induces the involution
on . We refer to as a principal polarization on .
We start by defining the moduli spaces we are considering and discussing the moduli interpretations of those families of particular interest to us in this study. Let denote the units of reduced norm in , which we realize as embedded in via . The subgroup is discrete, and it is cocompact if and only if . Via the action of this subgroup on the upper-half plane we define over the Shimura curve
For we have , which recovers the familiar modular curve setting. We are interested in the case, and so moving forward we make this assumption on . This impies that is a compact Riemann surface. For any , we get a rank lattice via the action of on via the embedding above:
From this we obtain a complex torus
of dimension , which comes equipped with an -action . We require some rigidification data, namely a Riemann form, in order to recognize as an abelian surface. It turns out that we always obtain such data in this setting ([Voi21, Lemma 43.6.23]); there is a unique principal polarization on such that the Rosati involution on agrees with the involution induced by the polarization on .
Definition 2.1.
An -QM abelian surface over is a triple consisting of an abelian surface over , an embedding which we will refer to as the quaternionic multiplication (QM) structure, and a polarization on such that the following diagram is commutative
where denotes the Rosati involution corresponding to . An isomorphism of QM-abelian surfaces and is an isomorphism of abelian surfaces such that and such that .
With this definition, we have moreover ([Voi21, Main Thm. 43.6.14]) that is the coarse moduli space of -QM abelian surfaces over , with the association
Remark 2.2.
For an abelian variety over a field , by we mean the ring of endomorphisms defined over . For an extension , we will write for the base change of to and for the ring of endomorphisms rational over .
More generally, if is an arithmetic Fuchsian group, we can consider the curve , and for there is a corresponding covering of curves . Our focus will be on the families of Shimura curves and , for a positive integer with , with being a special case of each.
With setup following the careful exposition of [Buz97, §1], let
and fix an isomorphism . This map induces, for relatively prime to , a map
We get from here a map
The curve can then be described as the Shimura curve corresponding to the compact, open subgroup
That is, Equivalently, fixing a level Eichler order in , the curve can be described, in the manner mentioned above, as that associated to the arithmetic group of units of reduced norm in . The Shimura curve corresponds to the compact, open subgroup
It follows from a celebrated result of Shimura [Sh67, Main Thm. I] that the curve has a canonical model , i.e., such that
and similarly for the curve .
Because we are assuming that is relatively prime to , the notion of “level -structure” is group-theoretically just as in the modular curve case. In particular, the natural modular map is a -cover. Hence, it is an isomorphism for and it has degree for , where denotes the Euler totient function. We now recall moduli interpretations for these families of Shimura curves as provided in, for example, [Buz97, §3].
Definition 2.3.
Suppose that and are -QM abelian surfaces over , we will call an isogeny of the underlying abelian surfaces a QM-cyclic -isogeny if and both of the following hold:
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The isogeny is QM-equivariant. That is, for all we have
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The kernel is a cyclic -module with
For example, a QM-cyclic -isogeny is the same as an isomorphism of QM abelian surfaces.
Proposition 2.4.
The Shimura curve is isomorphic to the coarse moduli scheme associated to any of the following moduli problems:
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(1)
Tuples , where is an -QM abelian surface and is an order subgroup of the -torsion subgroup of which is also a cyclic -module.
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(2)
QM-cyclic -isogenies of -QM abelian surfaces.
The curve has the following moduli interpretation: triples , where is a QM abelian surface and is a point of order .
These interpretations hold for any choice of principal polarization of . That is, if and are two such polarizations then they both induce the same coarse moduli scheme up to isomorphism (as discussed, for example, in [Rot04, §6]). Of course, the exact moduli interpretation does depend on , and we refer to [Rot04, Prop. 4.3] for more on how the corresponding spaces fit into the moduli space of principally polarized abelian surfaces. Because a principal polarization on a pair is canonically determined from a fixed , moving forward we will suppress polarizations and refer simply to QM abelian surfaces . By the same point, the condition on the polarizations in the definition of a QM-cyclic -isogeny is redundant; it follows from the QM-equivariant condition.
Letting denote an Eichler order of level in , the curve has the equivalent interpretation of parametrizing pairs where is a QM abelian surface and . (We just stated that we would no longer remark on polarizations, but we note that the polarization corresponding to such an will not be principally polarized, but -polarized in general.) That said, interpretations and in Proposition 2.4 will be the primary ones used in our study – see Remark 2.9 for related comments. Thus, we will mainly speak of QM by maximal quaternion orders, and it will benefit us to spell out the connection between interpretations and here. Let be a QM abelian surface. The -torsion of is acted on by , and the corresponding representation factors through . The resulting map must then be equivalent to
This can be viewed as a case of Morita equivalence, but it is worth being explicit here: let and denote the standard idempotents in ,
We then have , and acts on this direct sum in precisely the way noted by the above map.
Any proper, nontrivial, -stable subgroup must then have order (this justifies our definition of QM-cyclic isogenies, along with the equivalence of the moduli interpretations presented above). Further, such a subgroup is determined by a cyclic order subgroup of : we have where each summand is cyclic of order , and conversely for .
For our applications in §10, the genera of our Shimura curves of interest will be of use. Let denote the Dedekind psi function. The derivations are standard – for example, the formula for can be found in [Voi21, Thm. 39.4.20]:
Proposition 2.5.
where
are the numbers of elliptic -CM and elliptic -CM points on , respectively. For we have , and for we have
2.2. CM points
Let be a QM abelian surface over a number field , such that
If is nonsimple, such that is geometrically isogenous (i.e., isogenous over ) to a product of elliptic curves, then it must be the case that and are isogenous elliptic curves with complex multiplication (CM). In this case, where is a CM elliptic curve, say with corresponding imaginary quadratic CM field . Here it is forced that splits the quaternion algebra :
In this case in which is nonsimple, we refer to as a QM abelian surface with CM and we call the induced point a CM point. We call a point on or a CM point if it lies over a CM point on .
Generalizing our definition for isogenies, we call an endomorphism QM-equivariant if for all . If has -CM, then the ring of QM-equivariant endomorphisms of is an imaginary quadratic order in . This means that we have some such that
where denotes the unique order of conductor in . In other words, is the unique imaginary quadratic order of discriminant , where denotes the discriminant of , i.e., that of the maximal order . We will call this the central conductor of . We will refer to , or to any point in the fiber over under some covering of Shimura curves , as an -CM point when we wish to make the CM order clear. Note that the QM on is by definition defined over , so if is isogenous to over an extension then necessarily has its CM defined over .
2.3. The field of moduli of a QM-cyclic isogeny
2.3.1. The field of moduli
The field of moduli of a QM abelian surface defined over is the fixed field of those automorphisms such that is isomorphic to over . The conjugate abelian surface is defined as the fiber product over :
and is defined via the action of on endomorphisms of . (We are suppressing polarizations at this point, but recall this is justified as there is a unique principal polarization on compatible with .) Equivalently, the field of moduli of is the residue field of the corresponding point on .
More generally, for a QM-cyclic isogeny defined over , the field of moduli of is the fixed field of the group
For clarity: the vertical maps above are those induced by , membership of in means that both and are isomorphic to their conjugates by . In other words, the field of moduli of is the minimal field over which is isomorphic to all of its -conjugates. Equivalently, it is the residue field of the corresponding point on (which follows from the much more general theory of [Sh66, Thm. 5.1], as exposited more specifically towards our case in [Sh67, p. 60]).
We call a field a field of definition for a QM-cyclic isogeny as above, or say that is defined or rational over , if and both and can be given by equations defined over . We then have a model over so that . It follows that if is induced by , then any field of definition for contains the field of moduli .
It is not generally the case that fields of moduli are fields of definition for (polarized) abelian varieties of dimension bigger than , and this is a source of difficulty and interest in the study of their arithmetic. For instance, Shimura proved that the generic principally polarized even-dimension abelian variety does not have a model defined over its field of moduli [Sh72]. Particular towards our interests here, a QM abelian surface (or, more generally, a QM-cyclic isogeny) need not have a model over its field of moduli. However, we have the following result of Jordan [Jor81, Thm. 2.1.3]:
Theorem 2.6 (Jordan).
Suppose that is a QM abelian surface with QM by and with (equivalently, does not have CM by ). Let be the corresponding point. Then a field containing is a field of definition for if and only if splits .
2.3.2. The field of moduli in the CM case
Our attention in this study will primarily be aimed at determining fields of moduli, particularly in the presence of CM. We now recall prior work determining the field of moduli of a CM point on .
The answer begins with a fundamental theorem of Shimura [Sh67, Main Thm. 1]. Fixing an imaginary quadratic field and a positive integer , we let denote the order in of conductor and denote the ring class field corresponding to .
Theorem 2.7 (Shimura).
Let be an -CM point with residue field . Then
This tells us that in this setting there are two possibilities: either is the ring class field , or it is an index 2 subfield thereof. In his thesis [Jor81, §3], Jordan proved when each possibility occurs in the case where has CM by the maximal order of (the case). Work of González–Rotger allows for a generalization of Jordan’s result to arbitrary CM orders [GR06, §5].
To state their result, we first set the following notation: for a quaternion discriminant over and an imaginary quadratic field splitting the quaternion algebra of discriminant over , let
The assumption that splits is exactly the assumption that no prime divisor of splits in . From this we see that if and only if all primes dividing ramify in , while exactly when some prime dividing is inert in .
Theorem 2.8 (Jordan, González–Rotger).
Let be an -CM point.
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(1)
If , then we have .
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(2)
Otherwise, . In this case, is the subfield fixed by
where denotes complex conjugation and is the automorphism associated via the Artin map to a certain fractional ideal of with the property that
More specifically, is such that
where denotes the Atkin–Lehner involution on corresponding to .
Remark 2.9.
In fact, González–Rotger provide a generalization of Jordan’s result to all CM points on for squarefree . We state their result only for trivial level in part because it is all we will need, but moreover because some translation would be needed for the statement of their result as in their work to the conventions of this work. In comparing our work to [GR06], the definition of an -CM point on that they work with is different from ours; whereas our definition is that a CM point has -CM for an imaginary quadratic order if it lies over an -CM point on , their definition is that has -CM if it corresponds to a normalized optimal embedding of into an Eichler order of level in . The definition used in [GR06] provides a pleasantly uniform result similar to Jordan’s case, with every -CM point having field of moduli with . It will not be the case in our work, for level , that all -CM points have the same residue field. While our set of -CM points on is the same as that as defined in [GR06], the specific orders we attach may not agree.
The convention used in González–Rotger is common in the literature, appearing in the work of Rotger and his collaborators and also in recent work of Padurariu–Schembri [PS23] in which the authors compute rational points on all Atkin–Lehner quotients of geometrically hyperelliptic Shimura curves. The difference in convention one takes is motivated by which moduli problem one chooses for the course moduli scheme : our choice of working with maximal orders results in having natural modular maps from to for all , while working with Eichler orders of level naturally situates as the base Shimura curve. Because we want to work with general level, we work with maximal orders. A main difference between our work and that of [GR06], beyond the generalization from squarefree to all positive integers , is that we consider not just the CM points on a fixed curve but the fiber of the covering over any CM point.
2.4. Decompositions of QM abelian surfaces with CM
Restricting to the case of a QM abelian surface with CM over , we have seen that in fact is isogenous to a square of an elliptic curve with CM. Through a correspondence between QM abelian surfaces with CM and equivalance classes of certain binary quadratic forms, Shioda–Mitani [SM74, Thm. 4.1] proved the following strengthening of this fact:
Theorem 2.10 (Shioda–Mitani).
If is a QM abelian surface with -CM for an imaginary quadratic field , then there exist -CM elliptic curves over such that
The number of distinct decompositions of a given as above is finite, resulting from finiteness of the class number of any imaginary quadratic order in . This theorem was generalized to higher dimensional complex abelian varieties isogenous to a power of a CM elliptic curve independently by Katsura [Kat75, Thm.] and Lange [La75], and Schoen later provided a simple proof as well [Sc92, Satz 2.4]. A generalization from to an arbitrary field of definition is a result of Kani [Kan11, Thm. 2]:
Theorem 2.11 (Kani).
If is an abelian variety which is isogenous to over , where is an elliptic curve with CM over , then there exist CM elliptic curves such that we have an isomorphism
over the base field .
Kani in fact says more, which is relevant in the case of QM abelian surfaces with CM [Kan11, Thm. 67]: fixing a -CM elliptic curve with endomorphism ring of conductor , there is a bijection between the set of -isomorphism classes of elliptic curves isogenous to with CM conductor , and the set of -isomorphism classes of abelian surfaces isogenous to with corresponding central conductor . Explicitly, this bijection sends an -isomorphism class to the -isomorphism class .
In order to obtain concrete decompositions of QM abelian surfaces with CM, the remaining task is to identify which such products of CM elliptic curves have potential quaternionic multiplication (that is, which can be given QM structures), and to further describe the classes of QM abelian surfaces with CM. The following result provides the number of such classes ([AB04, Thm. 6.13] interprets this count as a certain class number, or equivalently as an embedding number, and [Vig80, Cor. 5.12] provides a formula for these class numbers which we use in the case).
Proposition 2.12.
Let be an imaginary quadratic field splitting , and let . Let denote the number of primes dividing that are inert in . The number of geometric -CM points on is then , where denotes the class number of the order .
In his thesis, Ufer touches on this topic of taking QM structures into account. In particular, he proves the following [Uf10, Thm. 2.7.12]: with the notation of Proposition 2.12, there exists a -to- correspondence
Based on the proof therein, it seems that Ufer could have said more, and so we do that here with reference to his argument. As above, let denote the number of primes dividing which are inert in .
Theorem 2.13.
Let be a QM abelian surface with CM by . There is then a unique -CM curve , up to isomorphism, such that
Additionally, there is a -to- correspondence
sending a point to the class of .
Proof.
Part (2) of the proof of [Uf10, Thm. 2.7.12] details the construction of a QM-structure by a maximal order in on for and both -CM elliptic curves. The product with the constructed QM structure then corresponds to a CM point on with central conductor .
Let be -CM elliptic curves. Part (3) of Ufer’s proof explains that if the abelian surface has potential quaternionic multiplication then in fact it has non-isomorphic QM structures. Put differently but equivalently to therein: let be the group generated by the Atkin–Lehner involutions on for inert in . The group then acts simply transitively on the set of -CM points on . If is such a point, then the action of any element leaves unchanged, providing the claim (this is proved by Jordan [Jor81] in the case, and extended to the general case by González–Rotger [GR06, Proposition 5.6]). By the count of Proposition 2.12, Theorem 2.10 and the fact that implies , the claimed result follows. ∎
Corollary 2.14.
Let be a QM abelian surface with CM by . Suppose that we have an -rational isogeny to the square of an elliptic curve. Fix any elliptic curve with -CM. There then exists an -CM elliptic curve , unique up to isomorphism over , such that over .
Proof.
Let be the central conductor of (i.e., such that ). By Theorem 2.11 and the discussion of Kani’s results following this theorem statement, there exists a CM elliptic curve , with endomorphism ring of conductor satisfying , such that over . This curve is unique up to isomorphism over . Base changing this entire picture to , we have
Now because (and hence , by transport of structure through our isomorphism) has QM and has CM conductor , Theorem 2.13 implies that as well. ∎
3. QM-equivariant isogenies
Our goal in the following section will be to determine the residue field of a CM point on for any coprime to , generalizing Theorem 2.8. A main component in accomplishing this is the study of the structure of, and the action of automorphisms on, components of certain isogeny graphs. Paths in these graphs of consideration will be in correspondence with isogenies of QM abelian surfaces which commute with their QM structures.
In this section, we prove facts about QM-equivariant isogenies needed in the proceeding section. Much of what we do in both this section and the next is in strong analogy to the case of isogenies of elliptic curves over studied in recent work of Clark and Clark–Saia [Cl22, CS22]. We provide proofs here for completeness and for clarity of said analogy.
Lemma 3.1.
Let be a field of characteristic zero, and let be a QM abelian surface over which does not have CM by an order of discriminant . For a prime number, the number of QM-cyclic -isogenies with domain which are -stable, up to isomorphism, is either or .
Proof.
Note that being prime means we are counting isomorphism classes of QM-cyclic -isogenies. The hypotheses on are equivalent to In this case, we have a bijective correspondence between isomorphism classes of QM-cyclic -isogenies and non-trivial, proper cyclic -submodules of . Under this correspondence, the isogenies which are -stable correspond to -stable submodules.
Now we have that is a cyclic subgroup of order , and in this way we have a bijective correspondence between the non-trivial proper QM-stable subgroups of and cyclic order subgroups of . This correspondence preserves the property of being -stable. We have thus reduced to the situation of the elliptic curve case, and may proceed as such: we are counting -stable cyclic order subgroups of . The total number of cyclic order subgroups is +1, and if more than such subgroups are fixed then is forced to act by scalar matrices on . ∎
3.1. Compositions of QM-cyclic isogenies
The following result is in analogy with [Cl22, Prop. 3.2].
Proposition 3.2.
Suppose that is a QM-cyclic isogeny, where is a QM-cyclic isogeny for .
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(1)
We have
-
(2)
If does not have CM by , then
Proof.
The containment of part (1) is clear. The assumption that does not have or CM is equivalent to , and in this case the reverse containment in part (2) follows by the same argument as in [Cl22, Prop. 3.2]. ∎
3.2. Reduction to prime power degrees
First, let us say something about rationality. Let be a QM-cyclic -isogeny which is rational over , where has prime-power decomposition . Letting be the kernel of this isogeny, we have that is isomorphic to the quotient . (The latter pair indeed provides an -QM abelian surface, as is stable under and is maximal, though we are abusing notation by referring to the QM-structure on the quotient as .) We have a decompositon with each of and cyclic of order , such that . This cyclic subgroup then decomposes as
where is the unique subgroup of order . Letting , each is QM stable and isomorphic to .
From the uniqueness of , and hence of the corresponding -cyclic subgroup , we get that each is -rational, resulting in -rational QM-cyclic -isogenies for each . On the other hand, given a collection of -rational QM-cyclic -isogenies with kernels , we get an -rational QM-cyclic -isogeny where .
As for fields of moduli, more towards our needs for the following section, we have the following:
Proposition 3.3.
Let be pairwise coprime, let be a field of characteristic , and let be a closed point which does not have CM by discriminant . For each , let be the natural map, let , and let be the fiber over of where . Then
Proof.
This follows as in the case of [Cl22, Prop. 3.5], using that for is a cover of with the same corresponding subgroup of as in the case of . ∎
It follows that if is a point which does not have or -CM and , with the natural maps, then
4. QM-equivariant isogeny volcanoes
Fixing a prime , we describe in this section CM components of -isogeny graphs of QM abelian surfaces over . We will use the work of this section to study CM points on the curves for and , in analogy to the modular curve case of [Cl22, CS22].
This study, like that of [Cl22, CS22], is motivated by the foundational work on isogeny volcanoes over finite fields by Kohel in his PhD thesis [Koh96] and by Fouquet [Fou01] and Fouquet–Morain [FM02]. We also recommend, and will refer to, a more recent, expository account of isogeny volcanoes in the finite field setting by Sutherland [Sut13].
4.1. The isogeny graph of QM abelian surfaces
Fix a prime number and an imaginary quadratic field . In [Cl22] and [CS22], the authors consider the multigraph with vertex set that of -invariants of -CM elliptic curves, and with edges corresponding to -isomorphism classes of cyclic -isogenies.
Here, we seek an analogue for abelian surfaces with QM by a fixed maximal order of the indefinite quaternion algebra of discriminant over , with . We let denote the directed multigraph with
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•
vertex set consisting of -isomorphism classes of -QM abelian surfaces, and
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•
edges from to corresponding to -isomorphism classes of QM-cyclic -isogenies .
A given vertex has edges emanating from it, via the correspondence of QM-stable subgroups of with cyclic order subgroups of discussed in Lemma 3.1.
Because a QM structure determines a unique principal polarization, we have dual edges via dual isogenies as in the elliptic curve case. As long as the source vertex corresponds to an isomorphism class having only the single non-trivial automorphism , we obtain a bijection between the edges from to and those from to ; in this case, outward edges from are in bijective correspondence with QM-stable subgroups of of order . This occurs precisely when does not have CM by discriminant or .
Our attention will be to vertices in corresponding to QM abelian surfaces with CM. For an abelian variety with QM by and -CM, recall from §2.2 that the central conductor of is defined to be the positive integer such that .
Lemma 4.1.
Suppose is a QM cyclic -isogeny, with a QM abelian surface with -CM. Then
-
(1)
The QM abelian surface also has -CM.
-
(2)
Let and denote the central conductors of and , respectively. Then and differ by at most a factor of :
Proof.
The argument is similar to that of the elliptic curve case. In our context, we need only remember that we care specifically about those endomorphisms commuting with the QM.
Consider the homomorphism
Because is assumed to be QM-equivariant, this restricts to a homomorphism
As in the argument in the elliptic curves case, the algebras of endomorphisms commuting with the quaternionic multiplication are isomorphic by the multiple of the map above. That is,
This completes part (a). Moreover, that
is an isomorphism tells us that
yielding . Via the dual argument, we obtain . ∎
For an imaginary quadratic field , we are therefore justified in defining to be the subgraph of consisting of vertices corresponding to QM abelian surfaces with -CM. An edge in corresponds to a class of QM-cyclic -isogenies between QM abelian surfaces with -CM, and the above lemma tells us that as we move along paths in , the central conductors of vertices met have the same prime-to- part. It follows that has a decomposition
where denotes the subgraph of with vertices having corresponding central conductors of the form for some .
Any edge in has vertices with corresponding central conductors and satisfying . Defining the level of a vertex in having central conductor to be , we note that a directed edge can do one of three things:
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increase the level by one, in which case we will call the edge ascending,
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decrease the level by one, in which case we will call the edge descending, or
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leave the level unchanged, in which case we will call the edge horizontal.
We will refer to ascending and descending edges collectively as vertical edges. For a connected component of , we refer to the subgraph consisting of level vertices and horizontal edges between them as the surface of that component. In other words, the vertex set of the surface consists of vertices with corresponding central conductor . This choice of terminology is reflective of the fact that we cannot have an ascending isogeny starting at level , and of fact that horizontal edges can only occur between surface vertices, as the following lemma states.
Lemma 4.2.
Suppose that there is a horizontal edge in connecting vertices and . Letting denote the central conductor corresponding to for , we then have . Furthermore, the number of horizontal edges emanating from a given surface vertex in is , hence is
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if is inert in ,
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if ramified in , and
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if is split in .
Proof.
That is part of our definition of horizontal edges. What we must prove is that does not divide .
The given edge corresponds to a QM-cyclic isogeny
where has central conductor for . By Theorem 2.13, we have a decomposition of these two QM abelian surfaces resulting in an isomorphic isogeny as below:
where each and each is an elliptic curve with -CM by conductor for . Restricting to and to , respectively, yields isogenies of -CM elliptic curves
(1) |
This provides the decomposition
The conductors of the endomorphism rings of and , each of which must divide and have the same coprime to part as , must then have least common multiple . This provides that either or must have CM conductor .
The conductors of the endomorphism rings of and must each be in the set , and must have least common multiple . This provides that either or must have CM conductor .
We now consider the corresponding isogeny of -CM elliptic curves of conductor from (1). In doing so, [CS22, Lemma 4.1] tells us that we must have . There, the result is reached using the correspondence between horizontal -isogenies of -CM elliptic curves over with proper -ideals of norm . This also gives us the count of horizontal isogenies mentioned; we have the count in the elliptic curve case as in [CS22], and from a horizontal isogeny of elliptic curves as in (1) we generate a QM-cyclic isogeny of our QM-abelian surfaces via the QM action. ∎
Each surface vertex has horizontal edges emanating from it, and therefore has descending edges to level vertices. For vertices away from the surface, we have the following:
Lemma 4.3.
If is a vertex in at level . then there is one ascending vertex from to a vertex in level , and the remaining edges from are descending edges to distinct vertices in level .
Proof.
We will use the same type of counting argument one may use in the elliptic curve case, as in [Sut13, Lemma 6]. The action of on preserves the level of a given vertex, and hence preserves the notions of horizontal, ascending, and descending for edges. As a result, the number of ascending, respectively descending, edges out of must be the same as for any other vertex at level by transitivity of this action on vertices at each level.
For , there are
total descending vertices from surface vertices (where is as in Proposition 2.12). The equality above states that this is equal to the total number of level vertices, and so the edges must all be to distinct level vertices. For , the result follows inductively using the same counting argument along with the fact that
4.2. QM-equivariant isogeny volcanoes
For a prime number , we define here the notion of an -volcano. This notion for the most part agrees with that in the existing literature, with the only caveat being that in the original context of isogeny volcanoes over a finite field one has volcanoes of finite depth. In our case, working over an algebraically closed field as in [Cl22, CS22], we adjust the definition to allow for infinite depth volcanoes.
Definition 4.4.
Let be a connected graph with vertices partitioned into levels
such that if for some , then for all If such a exists, we will refer to the smallest such as the depth of and to for the depth as the floor of , and otherwise we will say that the depth of is infinite.
Fixing a prime number , the graph with its partioning is an -volcano if the following properties hold:
-
(1)
Each vertex not in the floor of has degree , while any floor vertex has degree .
-
(2)
The subgraph , which we call the surface, is regular of degree or .
-
(3)
For (colloquially: “below the surface” and “above the floor”), a vertex in has one ascending edge to a vertex in , and descending edges to distinct vertices in . This accounts for all edges of which are not horizontal, by which we mean edges which are not between two surface vertices.
The results of the previous section immediately imply the following theorem, declaring that in most cases connected components of the subgraphs of are isogeny volcanoes. In such a case, we will refer to this graph as a QM-equivariant isogeny volcano. This justifies our use of terminology regarding edges and vertices in these subgraphs.
Theorem 4.5.
Fix an imaginary quadratic field , a prime and a natural number with and . Consider the graph as an undirected graph by identifying edges with their dual edges as described above. Each connected component of this graph has the structure of an -volcano of infinite depth.
A path in refers to a finite sequence of directed edges, say , such that the terminal vertex of is the initial vertex of for all . In the case, because the edges in all have canonical inverse edges we are justified in using the following terminology: we call an edge backtracking if is inverse to for some edge in the path. Note that in the case of ramified in , a path consisting of two surface edges always is backtracking. If is split in , then there is a horizontal cycle at the surface. In this case, concatenation of this cycle with itself any number of times does not result in backtracking.
Our definitions and the results of this section lead us to the following correspondence:
Lemma 4.6.
Suppose that . We then have a bijective correspondence between the set of geometric isomorphism classes of QM-cyclic -isogenies of QM abelian surfaces with -CM and central conductor with prime-to- part , and the set of length non-backtracking paths in . This associates to an isogeny its corresponding path in this isogeny graph.
Proof.
This result is in exact analogy to [Cl22, Lemma 4.2], and the proof is as therein. ∎
In §6, we will describe the Galois orbits of such paths in order to describe the -CM locus on via the above correspondence. For this, the following observation will be of use: any non-backtracking length path in for can be written as a concatenation of paths and , where is strictly ascending, is strictly horizontal and hence consists entirely of surface edges, and is strictly descending, such that the lengths of these paths (which may be ) sum to .
4.3. The field of moduli of a QM-cylic isogeny
A QM-cyclic isogeny of -CM abelian surfaces with corresponds to an edge in , say between vertices and in levels and , respectively. Assume that the path is non-descending (), so either it is horizontal () or ascending ().
An automorphism fixing must fix both and , and so by Theorems 2.7 and 2.8 we have that either , or . In the latter case, there exists an involution fixing , and we know precisely when this occurs by Theorem 2.8 – that is, when .
Assume that , such that has the structure of an -volcano. (We will deal with the case of in the remarks leading up to Proposition 5.3.) If is the unique edge between and a vertex in level , then is fixed by if and only if is. This is the case unless and splits in , in which case there are two edges from to surface vertices (which are not necessarily unique, or distinct from ). In either of these cases, consider with having CM by , a decomposition of our QM abelian surface corresponding to . The two outward edges from then have corresponding kernels and , with a prime ideal in of norm .
We claim that, in this situation, the involution fixing cannot fix , and hence cannot fix our edge . Indeed, the exact statement of Theorem 2.8 says that for a certain ideal of , so to fix it would have to be the case that acts on and hence on by complex conjugation. It follows from [GR06, Lemma 5.10] that this cannot be the case, as acts non-trivially on . From this discussion, we reach the following result regarding fields of moduli corresponding to our edges.
Proposition 4.7.
Let be a QM cyclic -isogeny corresponding to an edge from to in as above, with .
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If , i.e., if there is a prime which is inert in , then .
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•
Suppose that .
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If is a QM cyclic isogeny of QM abelian surfaces with CM by and splits in , then .
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–
Otherwise, , with equal to the field of moduli corresponding to as described in Theorem 2.8.
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5. The action of Galois on
5.1. Action of
We have an action of on : an automorphism maps a vertex corresponding to an isomorphism class of QM abelian surfaces to the vertex corresponding to , and edges are mapped to edges via the action on the corresponding isomorphism classes of isogenies. This action factors through , and preserves the level of a vertex. It follows that it also preserves the notions of ascending, descending and horizontal for paths.
For a fixed level , let denote the portion of from the surface (level ) to level :
By Theorem 2.7, the action of on factors through . If , i.e., if there is some prime which is inert in , then Theorem 2.8 says that the action of this group on is free. Otherwise, each vertex in level is fixed by some involution , and the class of QM abelian surfaces corresponding to has field of moduli isomorphic to .
We now fix a vertex in level in , and suppose that is an involution fixing . (This forces .) In the following two sections, we provide an explicit description of the action of on in all cases. First, we note here the number of vertices at each level fixed by .
Proposition 5.1.
Let be an -CM point fixed by an involution . Let denote the number of prime divisors of which are inert in . For , the number of vertices of in level fixed by is
Proof.
By Theorem 2.8, the involution is of the form for some , where denotes complex conjugation. The set of vertices of at level has cardinality , consisting of orbits under the action of . Each orbit is a -torsor, and yields a bijection on each.
As a result, we have that the number of level vertices in a given orbit which are fixed by is the same as the number of elements of fixed by . As shown in [Cl22, Prop. 2.6], this count is equal to , as acts on by inverting ideals. ∎
Regarding this count, by [Cox13, Prop. 3.11] we have the following:
Lemma 5.2.
Let denote the number of distinct odd prime divisors of a fixed imaginary quadratic discriminant . Then , where
5.2. The field of moduli of a QM-cyclic isogeny
Let be a QM cyclic isogeny of -CM abelian surfaces inducing a -CM point on , with and . Let be the length non-backtracking path in corresponding to , via Lemma 4.6, for the appropriate . The ordered edges in correspond to a decomposition
where each is a QM-cyclic -isogeny. If , then Lemma 3.2 provides
and for Proposition 4.7 determines for each . Note that if is a ring class field for any , then must contain
For , it is impossible to have , as has only a single prime divisor while has at least . This is of course consistent with, and can be seen from, the general fact that Shimura curves have no real points; the residue field of a -CM or -CM point on must be in this situation. By these observations and the discussion of the Galois action in the previous section, we have the following proposition.
Proposition 5.3.
Let be a QM-cyclic isogeny. Suppose that has -CM with central conductor and that has central conductor . Let . Let be the path corresponding to in .
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•
If , i.e., if there is a prime which is inert in , then .
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•
Suppose that .
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If splits in and factors through an -isogeny of QM abelian surfaces with -CM, then .
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Suppose that we are not in the previous case. Let be an involution fixing the class of or . If fixes the path , then . Otherwise, .
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5.3. Explicit description:
In the current section, we assume , such that each component of has the structure of an -volcano of infinite depth. This is in exact parallel to [Cl22, §5.3], baring the same structure of results.
Let , and let be an involution fixing a vertex in in level . In the following lemmas, we describe the action of on . In each case, we provide example figures of a component of (up to some finite level). In these graphs, vertices and edges colored purple are fixed by the action of the designated involution , while black edges and vertices are acted on non-trivially by . Without loss of generality based on the symmetry of our graph components, we will always take to be the left-most vertex in level in our figures.
Lemma 5.4.
Let be a prime which is unramified in and with . Let and be as above with , and consider the action of on
Each surface vertex has two descendants fixed by in level . For , each fixed vertex in level has a unique fixed descendent in level .
Proof.
By Lemma 5.2 we have , while for . The number of edges descending from a given vertex in level is , hence is odd, and so we immediately see that each fixed vertex in level with must have at least one fixed descendant in level , hence exactly one by our count.
The number of descending edges from a given surface vertex is either or depending on whether is inert or split in , hence is even in both cases. With our involution being of the form , a translated version of the argument of [CS22, Cor. 5.5] gives that each fixed surface vertex has at least one fixed descendant in level . Therefore, each fixed surface vertex must have at least two fixed descendants in level by parity, giving the result. ∎


Lemma 5.5.
Let be a prime that ramifies in and with . Let and be as above, and consider the action of on
Any vertex in level with which is fixed by has exactly one descendant in level fixed by .
Proof.
Each vertex in level has descendants in level . A descendant of must be sent to another descendant of by , by virtue of being fixed by . At least one descendant must be fixed by by the assumption that is odd. Lemma 5.2 gives that , and so there must be exactly one fixed descendant of . ∎


Lemma 5.6.
Suppose that is unramified in and that . Let and be as above with , and consider the action of on
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(1)
Every surface vertex fixed by has a unique fixed descendant in level .
-
(2)
Suppose . Each vertex in level which is fixed by has all of its descendants in levels to fixed by .
-
(3)
Let . If is a vertex in level fixed by , then the vertex in level which shares a neighbor in level with is also fixed by , and exactly one of and has its two descendants in level fixed by .
Proof.
(1) Lemma 5.2 provides . If is inert in , then each fixed surface vertex has three neighbors in level and hence at least one must be fixed. The count then implies exactly one of these neighbors must be fixed. If splits in , then each fixed surface vertex has exactly one neighbor in level which then must be fixed.
(2) Lemma 5.2 provides and . As each non-surface vertex has two immediate descendants in the next level, the claim follows.
(3) For , we have . Let be a fixed vertex in level having a fixed neighbor vertex in level . By a parity argument, there must then be another fixed vertex in level with the same neighbor in level as . By the count, it suffices to show that and cannot both have descendants fixed by .
Suppose to the contrary that and are -fixed neighbors of and , respectively, in level . We find that this cannot be the case as in [Cl22, Lemma 5.6 c]; this would imply that we have a QM-cyclic -isogeny which , upon restriction, would provide a cyclic, real -isogeny of elliptic curves with CM by . This in turn implies the existence of a primitive, proper real -ideal of index , which does not exist. ∎


In the case of ramifying in , the discriminant of must be of the form for or , and so or . Hence, the discriminant of the order corresponding to the surface of will also lie in one of these congruence classes mod . Whether these components have a surface loop is answered by the following lemma.
Lemma 5.7.
Consider a component of with ramified in . The surface of this component consists of a single vertex with a single self-loop if and only if and .
Proof.
This proof comes down to a simple argument about ideals of norm in , as in [Cl22, Lemma 5.7] ∎
The following lemmas therefore cover all possible cases.
Lemma 5.8.
Let and , and let and be as above with . Consider the action of on
-
(1)
The two descendants in level of the single surface vertex are fixed by .
-
(2)
For , there are vertices in level fixed by and they have a common neighbor vertex in level . One of these must have both descendants in level fixed by , while the other has its direct descendants swapped by .
Proof.
There is a single vertex on the surface, as the class number of is . Lemma 5.2 tells us that in this case, so both descendants of the surface vertex are fixed by . For , we have
so one of the fixed vertices in level must have both descendants in level fixed by , while the other has its vertices swapped by . ∎

Lemma 5.9.
Suppose that and with . Let and be as above with . Consider the action of on
-
(1)
There are two surface vertices, both fixed by . One surface vertex, which we will denote by , has both descendants in level fixed by , while the other has its level descendants swapped by .
-
(2)
If (such that the action of is defined at level ), then each of the vertices in level which descend from are fixed by .
-
(3)
For and for a vertex in level fixed by , let denote the other level vertex sharing a neighbor vertex in level with (which must also be fixed by ). Exactly one of or has both descendants in level fixed by , while the other vertex has its direct descendants swapped by .
Proof.
In this case the surface has two -fixed vertices with a single edge between them. We have
by Lemma 5.2, giving parts (1) and (2). For , we have
so half of the -fixed vertices in level must have both descendants in level fixed by , while the other half have their descendants in level swapped by . That there must be exactly one pair of fixed vertices in level descending from a given fixed vertex in level follows as in part (3) of Lemma 5.6. ∎

Lemma 5.10.
Suppose that with and . Let and be as above with . Consider the action of on
-
(1)
There are two surface vertices, both fixed by , and all vertices in level are fixed by .
-
(2)
For and for a vertex in level fixed by , let denote the other level vertex sharing a neighbor vertex in level with . Exactly one of or has both descendants in level fixed by , while the other vertex has its direct descendants swapped by .
Proof.

5.4. Explicit description part II:
Keeping our notation from the previous section, we now assume and . As mentioned earlier in this section, we always have in this case. Therefore, the action of on is free for all . This is splendid news for us; while the CM fields and require extra attention at other points in this study, they cause absolutely no difficulties as far as determining the explicit Galois action on . This is to be compared with the case of [CS22, §4], wherein much care goes into defining and explicitly describing a meaningful action of complex conjugation on CM components of isogeny graphs in these cases.
Still, we provide here example figures of components of (up to finite level ) for each case as reference for the reader for the path type analysis and enumeration done in §6. In these cases, edges from level to have multiplicity as exposited in [CS22, §3] due to the presence of automorphisms that do not fix kernels of isogenies. We therefore do not have a one-to-one identification between edges and “dual” edges in this case, and so as in the referenced study we clearly denote edges with orientation and multiplicity between levels and .




6. CM points on
We fix a prime power and , with , an imaginary quadratic discriminant. In this section, we describe the -CM locus on . To this aim, we fully classify all closed point equivalence classes, by which we mean orbits, of non-backtracking, length paths in . We record the number of classes of each type with each possible residue field (up to isomorphism).
In the cases, the notion of backtracking in has subtlety between levels and that is not present in isogeny volcanoes. We address this now: traversing any edge from a vertex in level to a vertex in level followed by the single edge from to corresponds to a composition of dual isogenies, and thus is backtracking. On the other hand, for a given isogeny corresponding to the edge from to , there is a single edge from to corresponding to its dual . Therefore, traversing followed by the other edge (respectively, either of the two other edges) from to does not count as backtracking in the case of (respectively, ).
With denoting the number of prime divisors of which are inert in , we have closed -CM points on , with the fibers over each under the natural map from to being isomorphic via Atkin-Lehner involutions. In all cases, we then have
where our sum is over closed-point equivalence classes of QM-cyclic isogenies with corresponding CM discriminant .
The map has nontrivial ramification over a closed -CM point if and only if . For and path length , we have that a closed point equivalence class has ramification, of index or in the respective cases of and , if and only if the paths in the class include a descending edge from level to level . This allows for a check on the classifications and counts that we provide.
If , then the path types showing up in our analysis of each are exactly those appearing in [Cl22] and [CS22]. In this case, each graph consists of copies of the analogous graph from the modular curve case. Moreover, we have shown that the action of relevant involutions on each component is identical to the action of complex conjugation in the case, up to symmetry of our graphs. In each place where the isomorphism class of a residue field in the referenced analysis is a rational ring class field, we have in its place here some totally complex, index subfield of a ring class field as described in Theorem 2.8.
If at least one prime dividing is inert in , i.e., if , then all of the residue fields of -CM points on , and hence on , are ring class fields. The path types showing up are exactly those in [CS22], but the counts will in general differ from the case of the previous paragraph. Specifically, a given path type in our analysis in the case of consists of classes with corresponding residue field and classes with corresponding residue field an index subfield of for some and . In the case of , the same path type then consists of classes, each with corresponding residue field .
Example 6.1.
Suppose that splits , and consider the case of and . We have closed-point equivalence classes of QM-cyclic -isogenies of QM abelian surfaces with -CM. Each corresponding point on has residue degree over its image on , having residue field . Half of these classes, corresponding to self-loop edges at the surface, have no ramification, while each of the classes corresponding to a pair of descending edges to level has .
A non-backtracking length path in starting in level consists of ascending edges, followed by horizontal edges, followed by descending edges for some with . We denote this decomposition type of the path with the ordered triple .
6.1. Path type analysis: general case
We begin here by considering the portion of the path type analysis that is independent of and .
I. There are classes consisting of strictly descending paths, i.e., with . If , then there are such classes, each with residue field . Otherwise, there are such classes, each with corresponding residue field an index subfield of .
II. If , there are classes of strictly ascending paths, i.e., with . If , then there are such classes, each with corresponding residue field . Otherwise, there are such classes, each with corresponding residue field an index subfield of .
III. If and , then there classes of paths with . If , then there are such classes, each with corresponding residue field . Otherwise, there are such classes, each with corresponding residue field an index subfield of .
IV. If and , then for each with there are classes of paths with and residue field . There are such classes if , and there are such classes otherwise.
X. If and , then there are classes of paths with and residue field . There are such classes if , and there are such classes otherwise.
6.2. Path type analysis:
Here we assume that is an odd prime.
V. If , then for each with there are paths which ascend at least one edge but not all the way to the surface, and then immediately descend at least one edge, with . Each such class has corresponding residue field . There are such paths if , and such paths otherwise.
VI. If and , then there are paths which ascend to the surface and then immediately descend at least one edge, with . If , then there are classes of such paths with corresponding residue field . Otherwise, there are classes of such paths with corresponding residue field , and classes of such paths with corresponding residue field an index subfield of .
VII. If and , then there are paths which ascend to the surface and then immediately descend at least one edge, with . Each such path has corresponding residue field . If , then there are classes of such paths. Otherwise, there are classes.
VIII. If and , then there are paths which ascend to the surface, follow one surface edge, and then possibly descend, with . If , then there are classes of such paths with corresponding residue field . Otherwise, there are classes of such paths with corresponding residue field , and classes of such paths with corresponding residue field an index subfield of .
IX. If and , then there are paths which ascend to the surface and then immediately descend at least one edge, with . If , then there are classes of such paths with corresponding residue field . Otherwise, there are classes of such paths with corresponding residue field , and classes of such paths with corresponding residue field an index subfield of .
XI. If and , then for each there are paths which ascend to the surface, traverse edges on the surface, and then descend at least one edge, with . Each such path has corresponding residue field . If , then there are classes of such paths. Otherwise, there are classes.
6.3. Path type analysis:
Here we assume that with odd.
V. If , we have classes consisting of paths which ascend at least one edge but not all the way to the surface, and then immediately descend at least one edge. We have the following types:
-
V1.
If , then there are classes with . If , then there are such classes, each with corresponding residue field . Otherwise, there are such classes, each with corresponding residue field an index subfield of .
-
V2.
If , then there are classes with . If , then there are such classes, each with corresponding residue field . Otherwise, there are such classes, each with corresponding residue field an index subfield of .
-
V3.
If , then there are paths with . If , there are classes of such paths with corresponding residue field . Otherwise, there are classes of such paths with corresponding residue field , and classes of such paths with corresponding residue field an index subfield of .
-
V4.
For each with , there are paths with . Each such path has corresponding residue field . There are equivalence classes of such paths if . Otherwise, there are such classes.
VI. If and , there are paths that ascend to the surface and then immediately descend at least one edge, with . Each such class has corresponding residue field . If , then there are classes of such paths. Otherwise, there are such classes.
XI. If and , then for all there are paths which ascend to the surface, traverse horizontal edges, and then descend at least once, with . Each such class has corresponding residue field . If , then there are classes of such paths. Otherwise, there are such classes.
6.4. Path type analysis:
Here we assume that with .
V. If , we have classes consisting of paths which ascend at least one edge but not all the way to the surface, and then immediately descend at least one edge. We have the following types:
-
V1.
If , then there are classes with . If , then there are such classes, each with corresponding residue field . Otherwise, there are such classes, each with corresponding residue field an index subfield of .
-
V2.
If , then there are classes with . If , then there are classes of such paths, each with corresponding residue field . Otherwise, there are classes of such paths, each with corresponding residue field an index subfield of .
-
V3.
For each with , there are paths . Each such class has corresponding residue field . If , then there are classes of such paths. Otherwise, there are such classes.
VI. If , then we have paths which ascend to the surface and then immediately descend at least one edge, with . We have the following cases:
-
VI1.
Suppose and . If , then there are classes of such paths, each with corresponding residue field . Otherwise, there are such classes, each with corresponding residue field an index subfield of .
-
VI2.
Suppose . If , then there are classes of such paths, each with corresponding residue field . Otherwise, there are such classes, each with corresponding residue field an index subfield of .
-
VI3.
Suppose . If , then there are classes of such paths, each with corresponding residue field . Otherwise, there are classes of such paths with corresponding residue field , and classes of such paths with corresponding residue field an index subfield of .
VIII. If , then we have paths which ascend to the surface, and then traverse the unique surface edge, and then possibly descend, with . We have the following cases:
-
VIII1.
Suppose . If , then there are classes of such paths, each with corresponding residue field . Otherwise, there are such classes, each with corresponding residue field an index subfield of .
-
VIII2.
Suppose . Each such path has corresponding residue field . If , then there are classes of such paths. Otherwise, there are such classes.
6.5. Path type analysis:
Here we assume that with . The types of paths occurring here are the same as in the previous section, owing to the fact that the structure of here is the same as therein. The corresponding residue field counts may differ, though, as the Galois action differs.
V. The analysis of this type is exactly as in §6.4.
VI. If , then we have paths which ascend to the surface and then immediately descend at least one edge, with . We have the following cases:
-
VI1.
Suppose and . If , then there are classes of such paths, each with corresponding residue field . Otherwise, there are such classes, each with corresponding residue field an index subfield of .
-
VI2.
Suppose . If , then there are classes of such paths, each with corresponding residue field . Otherwise, there are such classes, each with corresponding residue field an index subfield of .
-
VI3.
If , then each such class has corresponding residue field . If , then there are such classes. Otherwise, there are such classes.
VIII. If , then we have paths which ascend to the surface, and then traverse the unique surface edge, and then possibly descend, with . We have the following cases:
-
VIII1.
Suppose . If , then there are classes of such paths, each with corresponding residue field . Otherwise, there are such classes, each with corresponding residue field an index subfield of .
-
VIII2.
Suppose that . If , then there are classes of such paths, each with corresponding residue field . Otherwise, there are classes of such paths with corresponding residue field , and classes with corresponding residue field an index subfield of .
6.6. Primitive residue fields of CM points on
Fixing an imaginary quadratic discriminant and relatively prime to , we say that a field is a primitive residue field of a -CM point on if
-
•
there is a -CM point with , and
-
•
there does not exists a -CM point with with .
The preceding path type analysis in this section allows us to determine primitive residue fields for prime power levels . It follows from this analysis that, In all cases, there are at most primitive residue fields, and that each primitive residue field is either a ring classes field or an index subfield of a ring class field.
The cases occurring here are in line with those in [Cl22] and [CS22], though here the primitive residue fields depend on whether . In particular, if some prime dividing is inert in , then all residue fields of CM points on are ring class fields and hence there can only be one primitive residue field. This necessarily happens, for instance, if the class number of is odd. We provide Case 1.5b with the alternative title of “The dreaded case,” as in [Cl22], to warn the reader that it will have an important role in later results on primitive residue fields and degrees.
Case 1.1. Suppose .
-
Case 1.1a.
Suppose . If , then the only primitive residue field is an index subfield of . Otherwise, the only primitive residue field is .
-
Case 1.1b.
Suppose . If , then the only primitive residue field is an index subfield of . Otherwise, the only primitive residue field is .
Case 1.2. Suppose and . If , then the primitive residue fields are and an index subfield of . Otherwise, the only primitive residue field is .
Case 1.3. Suppose and . If , then the only primitive residue field is an index subfield of . Otherwise, the only primitive residue field is .
Case 1.4. Suppose and . If , then the only primitive residue field is an index subfield of . Otherwise, the only primitive residue field is .
Case 1.5. Suppose and .
-
Case 1.5a.
Suppose . If , then the only primitive residue field is an index subfield of . Otherwise, the only primitive residue field is .
-
Case 1.5b
(The dreaded case). Suppose . If , then the primitive residue fields are and an index subfield of . Otherwise, the only primitive residue field is .
Case 1.6. Suppose and .
-
Case 1.6a.
Suppose . If , then the only primitive residue field is an index subfield of . Otherwise, the only primitive residue field is .
-
Case 1.6b.
Suppose . If , then the only primitive residue field is an index subfield of . Otherwise, the only primitive residue field is .
Case 1.7. Suppose and .
-
Case 1.7a.
Suppose . If , then the only primitive residue field is an index subfield of . Otherwise, the only primitive residue field is .
-
Case 1.7b.
Suppose . If , then the only primitive residue field is an index subfield of . Otherwise, the only primitive residue field is .
Case 1.8. Suppose and .
-
Case 1.8a.
Suppose . If , then the primitive residue fields are and an index subfield of . Otherwise, the only primitive residue field is .
-
Case 1.8b.
Suppose and . If , then the only primitive residue field is an index subfield of . Otherwise, the only primitive residue field is .
-
Case 1.8c.
Suppose and . If , then the primitive residue fields are and an index subfield of . Otherwise, the only primitive residue field is .
Case 1.9 Suppose and .
-
Case 1.9a.
Suppose . If , then the primitive residue fields are and an index subfield of . Otherwise, the only primitive residue field is .
-
Case 1.9b.
Suppose and . If , then the only primitive residue field is an index subfield of . Otherwise, the only primitive residue field is .
-
Case 1.9c.
Suppose and . If , then the primitive residue fields are and an index subfield of . Otherwise, the only primitive residue field is .
Case 1.10 Suppose and .
-
Case 1.10a.
Suppose . If , then the only primitive residue field is an index subfield of . Otherwise, the only primitive residue field is .
-
Case 1.10b.
Suppose . If , then the primitive residue fields are and an index subfield of . Otherwise, the only primitive residue field is .
Case 1.11 Suppose and .
-
Case 1.11a.
Suppose . If , then the only primitive residue field is an index subfield of . Otherwise, the only primitive residue field is .
-
Case 1.11b.
Suppose . If , then the only primitive residue field is an index subfield of . Otherwise, the only primitive residue field is .
6.7. Primitive degrees of CM points on .
A positive integer is a primitive degree for a -CM point on if
-
•
there is a a -CM point of degree on , and
-
•
there does not exist a -CM point on of degree properly dividing .
If is such a degree, then the residue field of a degree point on is a primitive residue field of a -CM point on . For a prime power, we then have from the previous section that there are at most two primitive degrees.
While there are several cases that admit two primitive residue fields when , the only case admitting two primitive degrees is Case 1.5b (The dreaded case). In Case 1.5b, our two primitive residue fields are and an index subfield of , with respective degrees and . As is odd, we indeed have two primitive degrees in this case.
7. Algebraic results on residue fields of CM points on
We develop here algebraic number theoretic results on fields which arise as residue fields of CM points on which will feed into our main results. In particular, a determination of composita and tensor products of such fields will be needed in determining information about the CM locus on for general from information at prime-power levels.
For an imaginary quadratic field , we let denote the ring class field corresponding to the imaginary quadratic order of conductor in , i.e., that of discriminant .
Proposition 7.1.
Let denote an imaginary quadratic field of discriminant .
-
(1)
If , then for any we have
-
(2)
Suppose .
-
(a)
For any with , we have
-
(b)
If the class number of the order of discriminant is , i.e., if , then
-
(c)
Suppose we have positive integers which are all pairwise relatively prime and not in the defined above. Then , with
-
(a)
-
(3)
In all cases, and are linearly disjoint over .
Proof.
We now use Proposition 7.1 to get analogs of [Cl22, Prop. 2.10] and [CS22, Prop. 2.2], in which “rational ring class fields” are exchanged for those index subfields of rings class fields which arise as residue fields of CM points on .
Corollary 7.2.
Suppose that and are -CM points, where is an imaginary quadratic order in . For , let such that
Let and , and suppose that is a point lying above and which is fixed by an involution . Let denote the natural map. Then
-
(1)
The fields and are linearly disjoint over .
-
(2)
We have
-
(3)
We have
Proof.
The ring class fields and are linearly disjoint over by Proposition 7.1. That and are linearly disjoint over , and that
follow by the same type of arguments as in the analogous case of rational ring class fields in [Cl22, Prop. 2.10] and [CS22, Prop. 2.2], using that via Proposition 3.3 (note that the assumption that is fixed by forces , so this proposition applies.).
Part (2) now follows from the preceding remarks, combined with Proposition 7.1. As for part (3), first note that the fact that is fixed by some involution immediately implies that (as has no real points). We note that the map
is -bilinear, and the induced map on the tensor product over must be an isomorphism
as the two finite -algebras here have the same dimension. The result then follows as . ∎
Corollary 7.3.
Suppose that are -CM points with for each , where is an imaginary quadratic order in . For each , let such that
Let and . Let denote the natural map. Let be the set of discriminants of imaginary quadratic orders of class number with .
-
(1)
Suppose that . If , then we have
Now assuming , if or if then
-
(2)
Suppose that , that , and that are all pairwise relatively prime. We then have
with a subfield of of index if and index if .
Proof.
- (1)
-
(2)
This result follows similarly to the above argument using Proposition 7.1 once more. Note that our assumption that the are relatively prime forces to be a ring class field for each ; this assumption gives as , and our Shimura curves have no real points so indeed . ∎
8. CM points on
In this section, we describe the -CM locus on for any relatively prime to and any imaginary quadratic discriminant . For , this description is possible using the foundations we have built thus far, specifically Propositions 3.3 and 5.3, along with the path type analysis in §6. For , however, Proposition 3.3 does not apply.
We first elaborate on the description in former case, and then provide a result for compiling across prime powers in the case of . Following this, we discuss primitive residue fields and degrees of -CM points on .
8.1. Compiling across prime powers:
For a fixed prime relatively prime to , let with be an imaginary quadratic discriminant. Fixing , consider the natural map and the fiber over a -CM point . Tthere are such fibers by Theorem 2.13, and any two are isomorphic via an Atkin–Lehner involution for some prime which is inert in . We then have with
(2) |
for some non-negative integers , where is an index subfield of for all . The explicit values and , based on and , are determined by our path type analysis in §6.
Next assume , let denote a positive integer relatively prime to , and consider the fiber of the map over a -CM point . Let be the prime-power factorization of , and for each consider the fiber of over . We then have
with each of the form given in (2). Proposition 3.3 then provides that with
It follows that is a direct sum of terms of the form
where for each we have that is isomorphic to , or a totally complex index subfield thereof, for some .
Let be the number of indices such that is contained in , i.e., such that is a ring class field. The results of §7 then tell us that
where is a totally complex, index subfield in the case. (Note that can only occur, due to the assumption, if , so these possibilities do not require special attention here.)
8.2. Compiling across prime powers:
Here, we determine how to compile residue field information across prime-power level for . Our result here should be compared to [CS22, Prop. 82, Thm. 8.3], wherein more work is required due to the fact that residue fields of and -CM points on do not always contain the CM field .
Theorem 8.1.
Let coprime to with prime-power factorization , and suppose is a -CM point with . Let denote the natural map and let for each . Let be any path in the closed-point equivalence class of paths in corresponding to , and let be the number of descending edges in (which is independent of the representative path). We then have
Proof.
Because , we know that the residue field of the image of under the natural map to is necessarily . Therefore, for each and hence for each .
Let be a QM-cyclic -isogeny over inducing (necessarily there is such an isogeny, as ). Let , let , and for each let be the Sylow subgroup of . Let be the -primary part of , and let denote the central conductor of (where by here we really mean the induced QM structure on the quotient). Put
and
Our original isogeny then factors as where . Because a QM-cyclic -isogeny preserves the prime-to- part of the central conductor, the central conductor of must be divisible by . We then have
and it remains to show the reverse containment. If the central conductor of is also , then (up to isomorphism on the target) is a QM-equivariant endomorphism of and therefore as desired. Otherwise, the dual isogeny induces a -CM point with . We have , and the claim then holds via an application of Proposition 3.3 to . ∎
8.3. The main algorithm
We have now built up all we need to prove our main result, Theorem 1.1.
proof of Theorem 1.1.
The existence and structure of this algorithm follows from our prior results. We summarize the steps of the algorithm with appropriate references for individual steps here:
Algorithm 8.2 (The -CM-locus on ).
Input: an indefinite quaternion discriminant over , a positive integer coprime to , an imaginary quadratic discriminant and a positive integer
Output: the complete list of tuples , consisting of a boolean is_fixed, a positive integer , an integer and a positive integer , such that there exist exactly closed -CM points on with , with if is_fixed is False and with otherwise and with ramification index with respect to the natural map to .
Steps:
-
•
Compute the prime-power factorization of .
-
•
For each index , compute using the path type enumeration results of §6 information on all -CM points on . This information is stored as a list of lists as in our desired output at general level. (If , this information is originally obtained in the path-type analysis at prime-power level given in [Cl22] and [CS22].)
-
•
For each tuple , in which each is the information of an -CM point on of the form as computed in the previous part, compute the information of all -CM points on with image a point with information given by under the natural map to for all . This is done as follows:
- –
- –
-
–
The ramification index is equal to the maximum among the indices (so in particular is or if and only if and at least one of the has or ).
- –
This algorithm has been implemented, and is available as the function CM_points_XD0 in the file shimura_curve_CM_locus.m in [Rep].
8.4. Primitive residue fields of CM points on
The preceding results imply that the residue field of any -CM point on is isomorphic to either a ring class field or a totally complex, index subfield of a ring class field as described in Theorem 2.8. As a result, there are at most two primitive residue fields of -CM points on . Moreover, there exists a positive integer such that an index subfield of is a primitive residue field of a -CM point on if and only if for each there exists a positive integer such that an index subfield of is a primitive residue field of a -CM point on .
We begin by investigating the cases in which we do have such a field as a primitive residue field, determining when we have two primitive residue fields and, if so, whether we have two primitive degrees of residue fields. Note that this assumption requires , and hence . Let be the unique positive integer such that an index subfield of is a primitive residue field of a -CM point on for each . Setting
we have that a totally complex, index subfield of is a primitive residue field of a -CM point on by the results of §8.1.
If is the unique primitive residue field of a -CM point on for each , then is the unique primitive residue field for . Otherwise, let be the smallest positive integer such that there is a -CM point on with residue field isomorphic to either or an index subfield thereof for each . Setting
we then have that is also a primitive residue field for .
Now assume that we have two primitive residue fields, with and , of -CM points on . Set
We note for each by the definitions of these quantities. Further, by assumption we have at least one value of such that is a primitive residue field for , and thus
It follows that . Therefore, we have a unique primitive degree of a -CM point on if and only if , in which case is the unique primitive degree. The following result determines when this occurs:
Theorem 8.3.
With the setup and notation as above, let be the number of indices such that is a primitive residue field of a -CM point on (or equivalently, such that ).
-
(1)
If , then is the unique primitive residue field of a -CM point on , and is the unique primitive degree.
-
(2)
Suppose that and that for some with we are not in Case 1.5b (The dreaded case) with respect to and the prime power . We then have that and are the two primitive residue fields of -CM points on , while is the unique primitive degree.
-
(3)
Suppose that and that for all with we are in Case 1.5b (The dreaded case) with respect to and the prime power . We then have that and are the two primitive residue fields of -CM points on , and that and are the two primitive degrees of such points.
Proof.
The proof follows exactly as in [Cl22, Thm. 9.2]; the main inputs here are the degrees of our residue fields, which are the same for our totally complex index subfields of ring class fields as they are for the rational ring class fields appearing in the modular curve study. ∎
9. CM points on
In this section, we prove Theorem 1.2, showing that there is a very close relationship between CM points on the Shimura curves and . This is a generalization of [CS22, Thm. 1.2], which was specific to the case, and allows us to go from our understanding of the -CM locus on based on §8 to an understanding of, at the very least, degrees of CM points on .
Proof of Theorem 1.2.
We first recall some relevant facts about ramification under the natural map . All points on not having CM by discriminant are unramified over their image on . For , just as in the case, the curve over has no elliptic points of periods or , from which it follows that all and -CM points on are ramified with ramification index or , respectively. The curve has a single elliptic point of period , unramified with respect to , lying over each of the points on with -CM. The curve has a single elliptic point of period , unramified with respect to , lying over each of the points on with -CM. (One can see these claims regarding elliptic points and ramification from elementary arguments involving congruence subgroups. For example, for this is [DS05, Exc. 2.3.7].)
First, suppose that . If then the map is an isomorphism, so assume in which case it is a -Galois covering, hence has degree . Let be the conductor of , such that , and consider a point . It suffices to show that , viewing as a morphism over .
Take to be a QM-cyclic -isogeny over inducing . We know such an isogeny exists over by Theorem 2.6, because contains and splits . By Theorem 2.7 we have . We have a well defined Galois representation
not depending on our choice of representative for , as . Let and letting be a choice of generator (of as an abelian group, or equivalently of as an -module). The action of on is then tracked by an isogeny character
Theorem 2.13 gives that has a decomposition , where is a -CM elliptic curve over . The elliptic curves in this decomposition both have models over , as moreover they both have models over where is the -invariant of a -CM elliptic curve. Hence, a -rational model for this product is a twist of .
It then suffices, as our representation is independent of the choice of -rational model, to consider the case with and being -CM elliptic curves over . Here, our QM-stable subgroup corresponds to a cyclic subgroup of , and is induced by the Galois action on this cyclic subgroup. This character is surjective by [BC20, Thm. 1.4] (in which the authors state a result of [St01] in this form). Therefore, if is stable over an extension of , such that is in the kernel of , we have
and so indeed we have .
We next tackle case (2)(a), assuming that is a ramified point of the map . In this case, we have that a representative inducing , where is a QM-cyclic subgroup, is well-defined up to quadratic twist, as all models for are defined over . This is because, working geometrically for a second, a or CM point over is ramified with respect to the natural map to if and only if it is non-elliptic; it has the trivial stabilizer , while its image is an elliptic point of order or . The same argument as in the case above then applies.
We now assume that is a -CM point on with which is unramified with respect to the map to . If , then is an isomorphism, so the claim is trivial. If , the fact mentioned above that there is one point lying over each elliptic point on is exactly the inertness claim. For , we know that every point in is ramified with respect to the map , giving the claimed ramification index. The residue degree is therefore at most the claimed residue degree in each case.
To provide the lower bound on the residue degree, we modify the argument of the case slightly in a predictable way. If , then a representative for is well-defined up to quartic twist. We consider a representative of the form where are -CM elliptic curves and is a cyclic order subgroup (again, via the type of argument as in the case using Theorem 2.13). Let denote the quotient map. By tracking the action of Galois on a generator of we get a well-defined reduced mod Galois representation
which is surjective (see [BC20, §1.3]). As the set is stable under the action of for , we must have
giving the result for . For , exchanging “quartic” for “cubic” and for results in the required divisibility . ∎
10. Sporadic CM points on Shimura Curves
Fix an indefinite quaternion discriminant over and relatively prime to . In analogy to prior work on degrees of CM points on certain classical families of modular curves [CGPS22], we may consider the least degree of a CM-point on a Shimura curve for the modular Shimura curves and . For an imaginary quadratic order , the results of §8.4 allow us to compute all primitive residue fields and degrees of -CM points on , and hence to compute the least degree of an -CM point on . Note that the least degree of an -CM point on always satisfies
Using a complete list of all imaginary quadratic orders of class number up to , it then follows that if we have some order with
then we can solve the minimization over orders problem to compute the least degree of a CM point on :
We have implemented an algorithm to compute least degrees over specified orders and, when possible, to compute exactly as described above. The relevant code, along with all other code used for the computational tasks described in this section, can be found at the repository [Rep]. One may also find there a list of computed exact values of , along with an order minimizing the degree, for all relevant pairs with . All computations described in this section are performed using [Magma].
Theorem 1.2 provides all of the information we need to go from least degrees of CM points on to least degrees of CM points on . For ease of the relevant statement, we first generalize some terminology from [CGPS22]: we will call a pair with
-
•
Type I if splits , we have , and is not divisible by any prime , and
-
•
Type II if splits , we have , and is not divisible by any prime .
Proposition 10.1.
Let be a quaternion discriminant over and coprime to .
-
(1)
If is Type I, then
-
(2)
If is not Type I and is Type II, then
-
(3)
If is not Type I or Type II, then
Proof.
The natural map has non-trivial ramification exactly when is either Type I or Type II. In these cases, we have , which is as small as possible as the assumption implies these curves have no rational points. The statements then follow immediately from the residue degrees with respect to this map provided by Theorem 1.2. ∎
For a curve , let denote the least positive integer such that has infinitely points of degree . We call a point sporadic if
That is, is a sporadic point if there are only finitely points with . Sporadic points on modular curves have been objects of interest in several recent works, including [Naj16, BELOV19, BN21, CGPS22, Smi23, BGRW24].
In the remainder of this section, we apply our least degree computations towards the question of whether the curves and have sporadic CM points.
10.1. An explicit upper bound on
In analogy to the Heegner hypothesis of the modular curve case, we make the following definition:
Definition 10.2.
Let be an indefinite quaternion discriminant and a positive integer relatively prime to . We will say that an imaginary quadratic discriminant satisfies the Heegner hypothesis if
-
(1)
for all primes , we have , and
-
(2)
for all primes , we have ,
If satisfies the Heegner hypothesis, this implies the existence of a -CM point on which is rational over , the ring class field of conductor where . This point therefore has degree at most .
We provide an upper bound on the least degree of a CM point on as follows: let be the least positive integer such that
-
•
for all odd primes ,
-
•
for all odd primes , and
-
•
we have
Then , and so is an imaginary quadratic discriminant satisfying the Heegner hypothesis with . It follows that there exists a fundamental discriminant of an imaginary quadratic field satisfying the Heegner hypothesis with ; take such that corresponds to an order in and hence for some positive integer .
For an imaginary quadratic field of discriminant , we have
(see, e.g., [CCS13, Appendix]), such that the above provides
(3) |
10.2. Shimura curves with infinitely many points of degree 2
If , then as has no real points it certainly does not have a sporadic point. We mention here all pairs for which we know based on the existing literature.
All genus and cases necessarily have , as we have no degree points. Voight [Voi09] lists all for which has genus zero:
and genus one:
By a result of Abramovich–Harris [AH91], a nice curve defined over of genus at least with is either hyperelliptic over , or is bielliptic and emits a degree map to an elliptic curve over with positive rank. The pairs for which is hyperelliptic of genus at least were determined by Ogg111Actually, for the pairs and , the referenced work of Ogg says that the corresponding curves are hyperelliptic over . Ogg does not say whether that is the case over , but work of Guo-Yang [GY17] answers negatively for the former pair and positively for the latter. [Ogg83]:
As for the bielliptic case, Rotger [Rot02] has determined all discriminants such that is bielliptic, and further determines those for which is bielliptc over and maps to a positive rank elliptic curve. All such discriminants with and with not hyperelliptic are as follows:
10.3. Sporadic CM points
In order to declare the existence of a sporadic CM point on a Shimura curve , a main tool for us will be the following result of Frey [Frey94, Prop. 2] on the least degree over which a nice curve has infinitely many closed points:
Theorem 10.3 (Frey 1994).
For a nice curve defined over a number field , we have
where denotes the -gonality of , i.e., is the least degree of a non-constant -rational map to the projective line.
It follows from Theorem 10.3 that if
(4) |
then there exists a sporadic CM point on . To complement this, a result of Abramovich provides a lower bound on the gonality of a Shimura curve. Our cases of interest in applying this result are and (or, equivalently, , where is an Eichler order of level in , for the former curve).
Theorem 10.4 (Abramovich 1996).
Let be the Shimura curve corresponding to a subgroup of the units of norm in an order of . Then
Proof.
The following result will allow us to transfer information about the existence of sporadic points on to those on :
Proposition 10.5.
Let denote the natural modular map. Suppose that satisfies
Then any with is sporadic.
Proof.
We now obtain a lower bound on the genus of that will be amenable to our arguments:
Lemma 10.6.
For an indefinite quaternion discriminant over and relatively prime to , we have
Proof.
We make use of the trivial bound , and the lower bound
For , let and denote, respectively, the number of distinct prime divisors of and the number of divisors of . We then have
Using these bounds along with the fact that and , we arrive at the stated inequalities from the genus fromula given in Proposition 2.5. ∎
The combination of this lemma with (3) and (4) guarantees a sporadic CM point on if
This inequality holds for all pairs with .
Ranging through pairs with below this bound, we attempt to determine the fundamental imaginary quadratic discriminant of smallest absolute value satisfying the -Heegner hypothesis. If found, we check whether we have a -CM point of degree at most half via the inequality
(5) |
We confirm that (5) holds, and thus a sporadic CM point on is ensured, for all pairs with aside from the pairs comprising the following set :
For each pair , it is not that the inequality (5) does not hold. Rather, there is no imaginary quadratic discriminant of class number at most satisfying the -Heegner hypothesis, such that we fail to perform the check using only such discriminants. For each of these pairs, we compute exactly and find that for each the inequality
holds. By the preceding remarks, this confirms that the curve has a sporadic CM point for all .
There are exactly pairs , each with for which the inequality (5) does not hold. These are listed in the file bads_list.m in [Rep]. For each of these, we perform an exact computation of . By the above, a sporadic CM point on is guaranteed if
(6) |
Lemma 10.7.
There are exactly pairs consisting of a quaternion discriminant over and a positive integer coprime to such that the inequality (6) does not hold. For all such pairs we have , and the largest value of occuring among such pairs is .
Proof.
This follows from direct computation. The referenced pairs are listed in the file fail_dcm_check.m in [Rep]. ∎
Lemma 10.8.
Set
and
For each of the 181 pairs with either and or with , the curve has a sporadic CM point.
Proof.
For each such pair , we know from §10.2 that does not have infinitely many degree points and hence does not have infinitely many degree points. At the same time, we compute that this curve has a CM point of degree , which is therefore necessarily sporadic. ∎
We are now prepared to end with the main result of this section:
Theorem 10.9.
-
(1)
For each of the pairs in Table 1, the Shimura curve has no sporadic points. For each of these pairs, we have .
-
(2)
For each of the pairs in Table 1 except for possibly the in the following set:
the Shimura curve has no sporadic CM points.
-
(3)
There are at most pairs , consisting of an indefinite quaternion discriminant over and a positive integer coprime to , which do not appear among the listed in Table 1 and for which the Shimura curve does not have a sporadic CM point. These are listed in Table LABEL:table:unknowns_table.
-
(4)
Let be a pair consisting of an indefinite quaternion discriminant over and a positive integer coprime to . If is not listed in Table 1 or Table LABEL:table:unknowns_table and is not equal to , then the Shimura curve has a sporadic CM point.
Proof.
-
(1)
These Shimura curves are exactly those for which we know that via §10.2. That each such curve has a CM point of degree follows from direct computation.
-
(2)
For each pair in this table, we have
For each pair in this table other than the listed pairs, we compute that
- (3)
-
(4)
By Proposition 10.5, we have that has a sporadic CM point for all pairs aside from possibly the referred to in Lemma 10.7. Of the pairs listed in Lemma 10.8, we compute that each pair except for satisfies
and hence we have a sporadic CM point on for all such pairs. The result then follows from part (2).
∎
Remark 10.10.
For all of the pairs listed in Table LABEL:table:unknowns_table, we have . For all but of these pairs, we have . For such pairs, it follows that the curve has a sporadic (CM) point if and only if it is not bielliptic with a degree map to an elliptic curve over of positive rank. An extension of the results of [Rot02] mentioned in §10.2 to general level would then allow us to determine whether has a sporadic CM point for all but at most pairs with . Such an extension will appear in work of the author and Oana Padurariu [PS24].
References
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