Explicit Galois obstruction and descent for hyperelliptic curves with tamely cyclic reduced automorphism group

Abstract

This paper is devoted to the explicit description of the Galois descent obstruction for hyperelliptic curves of arbitrary genus whose reduced automorphism group is cyclic of order coprime to the characteristic of their ground field. Along the way, we obtain an arithmetic criterion for the existence of a hyperelliptic descent. The obstruction is described by the so-called arithmetic dihedral invariants of the curves in question. If it vanishes, then the use of these invariants also allows the explicit determination of a model over the field of moduli; if not, then one obtains a hyperelliptic model over a degree 2 extension of this field.