Class Numbers via 3-Isogenies and Elliptic Surfaces

Abstract

We show that a character sum attached to a family of 3-isogenies defined on the fibers of a certain elliptic surface over $\mathbb{F}_p$ relates to the class number of the quadratic imaginary number field $\Q(\sqrt{-p})$. In this sense, this provides a higher-dimensional analog of some recent class number formulas associated to 2-isogenies of elliptic curves.