The Manin constant of elliptic curves over function fields

Ambrus Pal

Published 2009-02-27, updated 2010-01-09Version 2

We study the p-adic valuation of the values of normalised Hecke eigenforms attached to non-isotrivial elliptic curves defined over function fields of transcendence degree one over finite fields of characteristic p. We derive upper bounds on the smallest attained valuation in terms of the minimal discriminant under a certain assumption on the function field and provide examples to show that our estimates are optimal. As an application of our results we also prove the analogue of the degree conjecture unconditionally for strong Weil curves with square-free conductor defined over function fields satisfying the assumption mentioned above.