Easy decision-Diffie-Hellman groups

The decision-Diffie-Hellman problem (DDH) is a central computational problem in cryptography. It is known that the Weil and Tate pairings can be used to solve many DDH problems on elliptic curves. Distortion maps are an important tool for solving DDH problems using pairings and it is known that distortion maps exist for all supersingular elliptic curves. We present an algorithm to construct suitable distortion maps. The algorithm is efficient on the curves usable in practice, and hence all DDH problems on these curves are easy. We also discuss the issue of which DDH problems on ordinary curves are easy

A Gluing Lemma And Overconvergent Modular Forms

We prove a gluing lemma for sections of line bundles on a rigid analytic variety. We apply the lemma, in conjunction with a result of Buzzard's, to give a proof of (a generalization) of Coleman's theorem which states that overconvergent modular forms of small slope are classical. The proof is "geometric" in nature, and is suitable for generalization to other PEL Shimura varieties

On the modularity of supersingular elliptic curves over certain totally real number fields

We study generalisations to totally real fields of methods originating with Wiles and Taylor-Wiles. In view of the results of Skinner-Wiles on elliptic curves with ordinary reduction, we focus here on the case of supersingular reduction. Combining these, we then obtain some partial results on the modularity problem for semistable elliptic curves, and end by giving some applications of our results, for example proving the modularity of all semistable elliptic curves over $\mathbb{Q}(\sqrt{2})$.Comment: 36 pages (revised version of 2002 preprint