Counterexamples to the local-global principle for non-singular plane curves and a cubic analogue of Ankeny-Artin-Chowla-Mordell conjecture

Abstract

In this article, we introduce a systematic and uniform construction of non-singular plane curves of odd degrees $n \geq 5$ which violate the local-global principle. Our construction works unconditionally for $n$ divisible by $p^2$ for some odd prime number $p$. Moreover, our construction also works for $n$ divisible by some $p \geq 5$ which satisfies a conjecture on $p$-adic properties of the fundamental units of $\mathbb{Q}(p^{1/3})$ and $\mathbb{Q}((2p)^{1/3})$. This conjecture is a natural cubic analogue of the classical Ankeny-Artin-Chowla-Mordell conjecture for $\mathbb{Q}(p^{1/2})$ and easily verified numerically.