Sato--Tate, cyclicity, and divisibility statistics on average for elliptic curves of small height

William D. Banks, Igor E. Shparlinski

Published 2006-09-05, updated 2007-11-26Version 4

We obtain asymptotic formulae for the number of primes $p\le x$ for which the reduction modulo $p$ of the elliptic curve $$ \E_{a,b} : Y^2 = X^3 + aX + b $$ satisfies certain ``natural'' properties, on average over integers $a$ and $b$ with $|a|\le A$ and $|b| \le B$, where $A$ and $B$ are small relative to $x$. Specifically, we investigate behavior with respect to the Sato--Tate conjecture, cyclicity, and divisibility of the number of points by a fixed integer $m$.