We formulate an analog of Hermite's constant for function fields over a finite field and state a conjectural value for this analog. We prove our conjecture in many cases, and prove slightly weaker results in all other cases.

Pour toute sous-vari\'et\'e g\'eom\'etriquement irr\'eductible $V$ du grou\-pe multiplicatif $\mathbb{G}_m^n$, on sait qu'en dehors d'un nombre fini de translat\'es de tores exceptionnels inclus dans $V$, tous les points sont de hauteur minor\'ee par une certaine quantit\'e $q(V)^{-1}>0$. On conna\^it de plus une borne sup\'erieure pour la somme des degr\'es de ces translat\'es de tores pour des valeurs de $q(V)$ polynomiales en le degr\'e de $V$. Ceci n'est pas le cas si l'on exige une minoration quasi-optimale pour la hauteur des points de $V$, essentiellement lin\'eaire en l'inverse du degr\'e. Nous apportons ici une r\'eponse partielle \`a ce probl\`eme\,: nous donnons une majoration de la somme des degr\'es de ces translat\'es de sous-tores de codimension $1$ d'une hypersurface $V$. Les r\'esultats, obtenus dans le cas de $\mathbb{G}_m^3$, mais compl\`etement explicites, peuvent toutefois s'\'etendre \`a $\mathbb{G}_m^n$, moyennant quelques petites complications inh\'erentes \`a la dimension $n$.

Geometric intuition suggests that the N\'{e}ron--Tate height of Heegner points on a rational elliptic curve $E$ should be asymptotically governed by the degree of its modular parametrisation. In this paper, we show that this geometric intuition asymptotically holds on average over a subset of discriminants. We also study the asymptotic behaviour of traces of Heegner points on average over a subset of discriminants and find a difference according to the rank of the elliptic curve. By the Gross--Zagier formulae, such heights are related to the special value at the critical point for either the derivative of the Rankin--Selberg convolution of $E$ with a certain weight one theta series attached to the principal ideal class of an imaginary quadratic field or the twisted $L$-function of $E$ by a quadratic Dirichlet character. Asymptotic formulae for the first moments associated with these $L$-series and $L$-functions are proved, and experimental results are discussed. The appendix contains some conjectural applications of our results to the problem of the discretisation of odd quadratic twists of elliptic curves.

Let $K$ be a number field, and let $F$ be a symmetric bilinear form in $2N$ variables over $K$. Let $Z$ be a subspace of $K^N$. A classical theorem of Witt states that the bilinear space $(Z,F)$ can be decomposed into an orthogonal sum of hyperbolic planes and singular and anisotropic components. We prove the existence of such a decomposition of small height, where all bounds on height are explicit in terms of heights of $F$ and $Z$. We also prove a special version of Siegel's lemma for a bilinear space, which provides a small-height orthogonal decomposition into one-dimensional subspaces. Finally, we prove an effective version of the Cartan--Dieudonn{\'e} theorem. Namely, we show that every isometry $\sigma$ of a regular bilinear space $(Z,F)$ can be represented as a product of reflections of bounded heights with an explicit bound on heights in terms of heights of $F$, $Z$, and $\sigma$.