Curves And Their Jacobians

This book presents some of the most important aspects of rigid geometry, namely its applications to the study of smooth algebraic curves, of their Jacobians, and of abelian varieties - all of them defined over a complete non-archimedean valued field. The text starts with a survey of the foundation of rigid geometry, and then focuses on a detailed treatment of the applications. In the case of curves with split rational reduction there is a complete analogue to the fascinating theory of Riemann surfaces. In the case of proper smooth group varieties the uniformization and the construction of abelian varieties are treated in detail. Rigid geometry was established by John Tate and was enriched by a formal algebraic approach launched by Michel Raynaud. It has proved as a means to illustrate the geometric ideas behind the abstract methods of formal algebraic geometry as used by Mumford and Faltings. This book should be of great use to students wishing to enter this field, as well as those already working in it.

Mumford's famous "Red Book" gives a simple, readable account of the basic objects of algebraic geometry, preserving as much as possible their geometric flavor and integrating this with the tools of commutative algebra. It is aimed at graduates or mathematicians in other fields wishing to quickly learn aboutalgebraic geometry. This new edition includes an appendix that gives an overview of the theory of curves, their moduli spaces and their Jacobians -- one of the most exciting fields within algebraic geometry.

This second volume introduces the concept of shemes, reviews some commutative algebra and introduces projective schemes. The finiteness theorem for coherent sheaves is proved, here again the techniques of homological algebra and sheaf cohomology are needed. In the last two chapters, projective curves over an arbitrary ground field are discussed, the theory of Jacobians is developed, and the existence of the Picard scheme is proved. Finally, the author gives some outlook into further developments- for instance étale cohomology- and states some fundamental theorems.

This text covers the essential topics in the geometry of algebraic curves, such as line and vector bundles, the Riemann-Roch Theorem, divisors, coherent sheaves, and zeroth and first cohomology groups. It demonstrates how curves can act as a natural introduction to algebraic geometry.

This volume contains a collection of papers on algebraic curves and their applications. While algebraic curves traditionally have provided a path toward modern algebraic geometry, they also provide many applications in number theory, computer security and cryptography, coding theory, differential equations, and more. Papers cover topics such as the rational torsion points of elliptic curves, arithmetic statistics in the moduli space of curves, combinatorial descriptions of semistable hyperelliptic curves over local fields, heights on weighted projective spaces, automorphism groups of curves, hyperelliptic curves, dessins d'enfants, applications to Painlevé equations, descent on real algebraic varieties, quadratic residue codes based on hyperelliptic curves, and Abelian varieties and cryptography. This book will be a valuable resource for people interested in algebraic curves and their connections to other branches of mathematics.

In this book, Miranda takes the approach that algebraic curves are best encountered for the first time over the complex numbers, where the reader's classical intuition about surfaces, integration, and other concepts can be brought into play. Therefore, many examples of algebraic curves are presented in the first chapters. In this way, the book begins as a primer on Riemann surfaces, with complex charts and meromorphic functions taking centre stage. But the main examples come fromprojective curves, and slowly but surely the text moves toward the algebraic category. Proofs of the Riemann-Roch and Serre Dualtiy Theorems are presented in an algebraic manner, via an adaptation of the adelic proof, expressed completely in terms of solving a Mittag-Leffler problem. Sheaves andcohomology are introduced as a unifying device in the later chapters, so that their utility and naturalness are immediately obvious. Requiring a background of one term of complex variable theory and a year of abstract algebra, this is an excellent graduate textbook for a second-term course in complex variables or a year-long course in algebraic geometry.

This book presents lectures from a conference on "Modular Curves and Abelian Varieties'' at the Centre de Recerca Matemtica (Bellaterra, Barcelona). The articles in this volume present the latest achievements in this extremely active field and will be of interest both to specialists and to students and researchers. Many contributions focus on generalizations of the Shimura-Taniyama conjecture to varieties such as elliptic Q-curves and Abelian varieties of GL_2-type. The book also includes several key articles in the subject that do not correspond to conference lectures.