An elliptic curve analogue of Pillai’s lower bound on primitive roots

Abstract

Abstract Let $E/\mathbb {Q}$ be an elliptic curve. For a prime p of good reduction, let $r(E,p)$ be the smallest non-negative integer that gives the x-coordinate of a point of maximal order in the group $E(\mathbb {F}_p)$ . We prove unconditionally that $r(E,p)> 0.72\log \log p$ for infinitely many p, and $r(E,p)> 0.36 \log p$ under the assumption of the Generalized Riemann Hypothesis. These can be viewed as elliptic curve analogues of classical lower bounds on the least primitive root of a prime.