Recently Ovsienko and Tabachnikov considered extensions of Somos and Gale-Robinson sequences, defined over the algebra of dual numbers. Ovsienko used the same idea to construct so-called shadow sequences derived from other nonlinear recurrence relations exhibiting the Laurent phenomenon, with the original motivation being the hope that these examples should lead to an appropriate notion of a cluster superalgebra, incorporating Grassmann variables. Here, we present various explicit expressions for the shadow of Somos-4 sequences and describe the solution of a general Somos-4 recurrence defined over the $\mathbb{C}$ -algebra of dual numbers from several different viewpoints: analytic formulae in terms of elliptic functions, linear difference equations, and Hankel determinants.

We prove a necessary and sufficient condition for isogenous elliptic curves based on the algebraic dependence of p-adic elliptic functions. As a consequence, we give a short proof of the p-adic analogue of Schneider’s theorem on the linear independence of p-adic elliptic logarithms of algebraic points on two nonisogenous elliptic curves defined over the field of algebraic numbers.

Generating functions are used to derive formulas for the number of representations of a positive integer by each of the quadratic forms x12+x22+x32+2x42, x12+2x22+2x32+2x42, x12+x22+2x32+4x42 and x12+2x22+4x32+4x42. The formulas show that the number of representations by each form is always positive. Some of the analogous results involving sums of triangular numbers are also given.