On the Representation of Primes by Binary Quadratic Forms, and Elliptic Curves

Michele Elia, Federico Pintore

Published 2016-04-22Version 1

It is shown that, under some mild technical conditions, representations of prime numbers by binary quadratic forms can be computed in polynomial complexity by exploiting Schoof's algorithm, which counts the number of $\mathbb F_q$-points of an elliptic curve over a finite field $\mathbb F_q$. Further, a method is described which computes representations of primes from reduced quadratic forms by means of the integral roots of polynomials over $\mathbb Z$. Lastly, some progress is made on the still-unsettled general problem of deciding which primes are represented by which classes of quadratic forms of given discriminant.