Heights of points [01K3]
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Heights of points
The height of an algebraic point is an important tool in Diophantine geometry. If is a line bundle with an adelic metric on , then for any point , viewed as a closed subscheme of , one has
where is any meromorphic section on which has neither a zero nor a pole at . More generally, let be an algebraic point and let be the corresponding closed point of . Then,
is the height of with respect to the metrized line bundle . In fact, restricted to points, these definitions apply to any, not necessary admissible,
Observe also the following functorial property of the height : If is a morphism and , then . Finally, recall that if is a global field, then the height with respect to a metrized ample line bundle satisfies Northcott’s finiteness property : for any integers and , there are only finitely many points such that and .