Graph Laplacians, component groups and Drinfeld modular curves

Abstract

Let $\frak{p}$ be a prime ideal of $\mathbb{F}_q[T]$. Let $J_0(\frak{p})$ be the Jacobian variety of the Drinfeld modular curve $X_0(\frak{p})$. Let $\Phi$ be the component group of $J_0(\frak{p})$ at the place $1/T$. We use graph Laplacians to estimate the order of $\Phi$ as $\mathrm{deg}(\frak{p})$ goes to infinity. This estimate implies that $\Phi$ is not annihilated by the Eisenstein ideal of the Hecke algebra $\mathbb{T}(\frak{p})$ acting on $J_0(\frak{p})$ once the degree of $\frak{p}$ is large enough. We also obtain an asymptotic formula for the size of the discriminant of $\mathbb{T}(\frak{p})$ by relating this discriminant to the order of $\Phi$; in this problem the order of $\Phi$ plays a role similar to the Faltings height of classical modular Jacobians. Finally, we bound the spectrum of the adjacency operator of a finite subgraph of an infinite diagram in terms of the spectrum of the adjacency operator of the diagram itself; this result has applications to the gonality of Drinfeld modular curves.