On the extension of even families of non-congruent numbers

Abstract

A method that extends existing families of even non-congruent numbers to produce new families of non-congruent numbers with arbitrarily many distinct prime factors is presented. We show that infinitely many new non-congruent numbers can be generated by appending a suitable collection of primes onto any even non-congruent number whose corresponding congruent number elliptic curve has 2-Selmer rank of zero. Our method relies upon Monsky’s formula for computing the 2-Selmer rank of the congruent number elliptic curve. Even non-congruent numbers constructed according to our result have an unlimited number of prime factors in each odd congruence class modulo eight, and have congruent number elliptic curves with 2-Selmer rank equal to zero.