Paper detail

Continued fractions for rational torsion

We exhibit a method to use continued fractions in function fields to find new families of hyperelliptic curves over the rationals with given torsion order in their Jacobians. To show the utility of the method, we exhibit a new infinite family of curves over $\mathbb Q$ with genus two whose Jacobians have torsion order eleven. {\bf In this updated version, we correct an error in the initial paper:} The ``new" family claimed in the original Theorem~1 was pointed out by Professor D.~Lorenzini to have elements isomorphic with elements in Flynn's family (as defined in the paper); his guess that the families were the same up to element-wise isomorphism is correct. Here, we give a family that is new; the old proof, now free of clerical error (we had replaced our $g_u(x)$ by $1+g_u(x)$ when determining Igusa invariants), holds. Changes from the original version are flagged by {\color{red} UPDATED}; there are three of these: the new family $g_u(x)$; its partial quotients; the way to solve in the naive approach to find this new family. (We also added an acknowledgement section.) Finally, as an appendix we include a PDF export of Maple calculations verifying our correction.