ON ${p}$-ADIC HEIGHTS IN FAMILIES OF ELLIPTIC CURVES

Abstract

The non-degeneracy of the canonical p-adic height pairing defined by Perrin-Riou and Schneider on an elliptic curve over a number field with good, ordinary reduction is still unknown. Following the work done for the real-valued pairing, the behaviour of the p-adic height is analysed as a point varies on a section of a family of elliptic curves, and so new information is obtained about this pairing. In particular, the variation is p-adically continuous and the non-degeneracy of a set of sections can be checked simultaneously for almost all elements of the family. The paper contains some conjectures about the valuation of the p-adic regulator and its consequences for the growth of the Mordell–Weil group in cyclotomic Zp-extensions.