A Mass Formula For Artin--Schreier Curves Over Finite Fields

Abstract: We study a mass formula for Artin--Schreier curves of genus $g$ defined over a finite field $k$ of characteristic $p$. For an odd prime $p$ and for small $g$, we determine the number of $k$-isomorphism classes of Artin-Schreier curves of genus $g$, weighted by the order of the centralizer of the Artin-Schreier involution in the automorphism group. This extends earlier results by several authors in characteristic $p=2$. Keywords: Artin-Schreier curve, finite field, automorphism, Mass formula, moduli space, arithmetic statistics