Compositio Mathematica 115: 37–69, 1999. 37 c 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. 2 A discriminant and an upper bound for ! for hyperelliptic arithmetic surfaces IVAN KAUSZ ? Mathematisches Institut der Universitat¨ zu Koln,¨ Weyertal 86-90, 50931 Cologne, Germany e-mail:
[email protected] Received 13 November 1996; accepted in final form 1 September 1997 g K Abstract. We define a natural discriminant for a hyperelliptic curve X of genus over a field as a g + canonical element of the 8 4 th tensor power of the maximal exterior product of the vectorspace v K X of global differential forms on X .If is a discrete valuation on and has semistable reduction v at v , we compute the order of vanishing of the discriminant at in terms of the geometry of the v reduction of X over . As an application, we find an upper bound for the Arakelov self-intersection of the relative dualizing sheaf on a semistable hyperelliptic arithmetic surface. Mathematics Subject Classifications (1991): 11G30, 14G40, 14H10. Key words: hyperelliptic curves, arithmetic surfaces, Arakelov theory. 0. Introduction In the present paper we introduce a natural discriminant for hyperelliptic curves of > g + genus g 2. It will be defined as a canonical element of the 8 4 th tensor power of the maximal exterior product of the vectorspace of global differential forms on the curve. To fix ideas, let us first consider the analogous case of an elliptic curve K E over a field , given, say, by the Weierstraß equation 2 3 2 + a xy + a y = x + a x + a x + a : y 1 3 2 4 6 2 K It is well known that while its discriminant depends on the special equation, 12 0 1 12 = x= y + a x + a 2 H E; the element E=K d 2 1 3 is a E=K E v K O K genuine invariant of .