Elliptic curves with a given number of points over finite fields

Abstract: Given an elliptic curve $E$ and a positive integer $N$, we consider the problem of counting the number of primes $p$ for which the reduction of $E$ modulo $p$ possesses exactly $N$ points over $\mathbb F_p$. On average (over a family of elliptic curves), we show bounds that are significantly better than what is trivially obtained by the Hasse bound. Under some additional hypotheses, including a conjecture concerning the short interval distribution of primes in arithmetic progressions, we obtain an asymptotic formula for the average.