On the Representation of Primes by Binary Quadratic Forms, and Elliptic Curves

Abstract

It is shown that, under some mild technical conditions, representations of prime numbers by binary quadratic forms can be computed in polynomial complexity by exploiting Schoof's algorithm, which counts the number of $\mathbb F_q$-points of an elliptic curve over a finite field $\mathbb F_q$. Further, a method is described which computes representations of primes from reduced quadratic forms by means of the integral roots of polynomials over $\mathbb Z$. Lastly, some progress is made on the still-unsettled general problem of deciding which primes are represented by which classes of quadratic forms of given discriminant.