An analogue of cyclotomic units for products of elliptic curves

Abstract

We construct certain elements in the integral motivic cohomology group $H^3_{{\cal M}}(E \times E',\Q(2))_{\ZZ}$, where $E$ and $E'$ are elliptic curves over $\Q$. When $E$ is not isogenous to $E'$ these elements are analogous to `cyclotomic units' in real quadratic fields as they come from modular parametrisations of the elliptic curves. We then find an analogue of the class number formula for real quadratic fields. Finally we use the Beilinson conjectures for $E \times E'$ to deduce them for products of $n$ elliptic curves. A certain amount of this paper is expository in nature.