The Geometry and Arithmetic of Elliptic Surfaces
Abstract
Description
We survey some aspects of the theory of elliptic surfaces and give some results aimed at determining the Picard number of such a surface. For the surfaces considered, this will be equivalent to determining the Mordell-Weil rank of an elliptic curve defined over a function field in one variable. An interesting conjecture concerning Galois actions on the relative de~Rham cohomology of these surfaces is discussed.
12 pages, Plain TeX
12 pages, Plain TeX