Congruent numbers and Heegner points

A positive integer is called a congruent number if it is the area of a rightangled triangle, all of whose sides have rational length. The problem of determining which positive integers are congruent is buried in antiquity (see Chapter 9 of Dickson [6]), with it long being known that the numbers 5, 6, and 7 are congruent. Fermat proved that 1 is not a congruent number, and similar arguments show that also 2 and 3 are not congruent numbers. No algorithm has ever been proven for infallibly deciding whether a given integer n ≥ 1 is congruent. The reason for this is that it can easily be seen that an integer n ≥ 1 is congruent if and only if there exists a point (x, y), with x and y rational numbers and y = 0, on the elliptic curve ny2 = x3− x. Moreover, assuming n to be square free, a classical calculation of root numbers shows that the complex L-function of this curve has zero of odd order at the center of its critical strip precisely when n lies in one of the residue classes of 5, 6, or 7 modulo 8. Thus, in particular, the unproven conjecture of Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer predicts that every positive integer lying in the residue classes of 5, 6, and 7 modulo 8 should be a congruent number. The aim of this paper is to prove the following partial results in this direction.