The Mordell Conjecture

"The Mordell conjecture (Faltings's theorem) is one of the most important achievements in Diophantine geometry, stating that an algebraic curve of genus at least two has only finitely many rational points. This book provides a self-contained and detailed proof of the Mordell conjecture following the papers of Bombieri and Vojta. Also acting as a concise introduction to Diophantine geometry, the text starts from basics of algebraic number theory, touches on several important theorems and techniques (including the theory of heights, the Mordell- Weil theorem, Siegel's lemma and Roth's lemma) from Diophantine geometry, and culminates in the proof of the Mordell conjecture. Based on the authors' own teaching experience, it will be of great value to advanced undergraduate and graduate students in algebraic geometry and number theory, as well as researchers interested in Diophantine geometry as a whole"--

This book provides a self-contained proof of the Mordell conjecture (Faltings's theorem) and a concise introduction to Diophantine geometry.

The book is based on a course given by J.-P. Serre at the Collège de France in 1980 and 1981. Basic techniques in Diophantine geometry are covered, such as heights, the Mordell-Weil theorem, Siegel's and Baker's theorems, Hilbert's irreducibility theorem, and the large sieve. Included are applications to, for example, Mordell's conjecture, the construction of Galois extensions, and the classical class number 1 problem. Comprehensive bibliographical references.

The Dynamical Mordell-Lang Conjecture is an analogue of the classical Mordell-Lang conjecture in the context of arithmetic dynamics. It predicts the behavior of the orbit of a point x under the action of an endomorphism f of a quasiprojective complex variety X. More precisely, it claims that for any point x in X and any subvariety V of X, the set of indices n such that the n-th iterate of x under f lies in V is a finite union of arithmetic progressions. In this book the authors present all known results about the Dynamical Mordell-Lang Conjecture, focusing mainly on a p-adic approach which provides a parametrization of the orbit of a point under an endomorphism of a variety.

This is an introduction to diophantine geometry at the advanced graduate level. The book contains a proof of the Mordell conjecture which will make it quite attractive to graduate students and professional mathematicians. In each part of the book, the reader will find numerous exercises.

This introduction to the recent exciting developments in the applications of model theory to algebraic geometry, illustrated by E. Hrushovski's model-theoretic proof of the geometric Mordell-Lang Conjecture starts from very basic background and works up to the detailed exposition of Hrushovski's proof, explaining the necessary tools and results from stability theory on the way. The first chapter is an informal introduction to model theory itself, making the book accessible (with a little effort) to readers with no previous knowledge of model theory. The authors have collaborated closely to achieve a coherent and self- contained presentation, whereby the completeness of exposition of the chapters varies according to the existence of other good references, but comments and examples are always provided to give the reader some intuitive understanding of the subject.

This volume is the result of a (mainly) instructional conference on arithmetic geometry, held from July 30 through August 10, 1984 at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. This volume contains expanded versions of almost all the instructional lectures given during the conference. In addition to these expository lectures, this volume contains a translation into English of Falt ings' seminal paper which provided the inspiration for the conference. We thank Professor Faltings for his permission to publish the translation and Edward Shipz who did the translation. We thank all the people who spoke at the Storrs conference, both for helping to make it a successful meeting and enabling us to publish this volume. We would especially like to thank David Rohrlich, who delivered the lectures on height functions (Chapter VI) when the second editor was unavoidably detained. In addition to the editors, Michael Artin and John Tate served on the organizing committee for the conference and much of the success of the conference was due to them-our thanks go to them for their assistance. Finally, the conference was only made possible through generous grants from the Vaughn Foundation and the National Science Foundation.

Diophantine problems represent some of the strongest aesthetic attractions to algebraic geometry. They consist in giving criteria for the existence of solutions of algebraic equations in rings and fields, and eventually for the number of such solutions. The fundamental ring of interest is the ring of ordinary integers Z, and the fundamental field of interest is the field Q of rational numbers. One discovers rapidly that to have all the technical freedom needed in handling general problems, one must consider rings and fields of finite type over the integers and rationals. Furthermore, one is led to consider also finite fields, p-adic fields (including the real and complex numbers) as representing a localization of the problems under consideration. We shall deal with global problems, all of which will be of a qualitative nature. On the one hand we have curves defined over say the rational numbers. Ifthe curve is affine one may ask for its points in Z, and thanks to Siegel, one can classify all curves which have infinitely many integral points. This problem is treated in Chapter VII. One may ask also for those which have infinitely many rational points, and for this, there is only Mordell's conjecture that if the genus is :;;; 2, then there is only a finite number of rational points.

Grothendieck’s beautiful theory of schemes permeates modern algebraic geometry and underlies its applications to number theory, physics, and applied mathematics. This simple account of that theory emphasizes and explains the universal geometric concepts behind the definitions. In the book, concepts are illustrated with fundamental examples, and explicit calculations show how the constructions of scheme theory are carried out in practice.

This monograph is a bridge between the classical theory and modern approach via arithmetic geometry.