Sieving for rational points on hyperelliptic curves

We give a new and efficient method of sieving for rational points on hyperelliptic curves. This method is often successful in proving that a given hyperelliptic curve, suspected to have no rational points, does in fact have no rational points; we have often found this to be the case even when our curve has points over all localizations Qp. We illustrate the practicality of the method with some examples of hyperelliptic curves of genus 1

Weierstrass semigroups on the Skabelund maximal curve

In 2017, D. Skabelund constructed a maximal curve over $\mathbb{F}_{q^4}$ as a cyclic cover of the Suzuki curve. In this paper we explicitly determine the structure of the Weierstrass semigroup at any point $P$ of the Skabelund curve. We show that its Weierstrass points are precisely the $\mathbb{F}_{q^4}$-rational points. Also we show that among the Weierstrass points, two types of Weierstrass semigroup occur: one for the $\mathbb{F}_q$-rational points, one for the remaining $\mathbb{F}_{q^4}$-rational points. For each of these two types its Ap\'ery set is computed as well as a set of generators

On the maximum number of rational points on singular curves over finite fields

We give a construction of singular curves with many rational points over finite fields. This construction enables us to prove some results on the maximum number of rational points on an absolutely irreducible projective algebraic curve defined over Fq of geometric genus g and arithmetic genus $\pi$

Rational points on curves over function fields

We provide in this paper an upper bound for the number of rational points on a curve defined over a one variable function field over a finite field. The bound only depends on the curve and the field, but not on the Jacobian variety of the curve