Counting elliptic curves with prescribed torsion

Abstract

Mazur's theorem states that there are exactly 15 possibilities for the torsion subgroup of an elliptic curve over the rational numbers. We determine how often each of these groups actually occurs. Precisely, if $G$ is one of these 15 groups, we show that the number of elliptic curves up to height $X$ whose torsion subgroup is isomorphic to $G$ is on the order of $X^{1/d}$, for some number $d=d(G)$ which we compute.