GOLDFELD’S CONJECTURE AND CONGRUENCES BETWEEN HEEGNER POINTS

Abstract

Given an elliptic curve$E$over$\mathbb{Q}$, a celebrated conjecture of Goldfeld asserts that a positive proportion of its quadratic twists should have analytic rank 0 (respectively 1). We show that this conjecture holds whenever$E$has a rational 3-isogeny. We also prove the analogous result for the sextic twists of$j$-invariant 0 curves. For a more general elliptic curve$E$, we show that the number of quadratic twists of$E$up to twisting discriminant$X$of analytic rank 0 (respectively 1) is$\gg X/\log ^{5/6}X$, improving the current best general bound toward Goldfeld’s conjecture due to Ono–Skinner (respectively Perelli–Pomykala). To prove these results, we establish a congruence formula between$p$-adic logarithms of Heegner points and apply it in the special cases$p=3$and$p=2$to construct the desired twists explicitly. As a by-product, we also prove the corresponding$p$-part of the Birch and Swinnerton–Dyer conjecture for these explicit twists.