Elliptic curves, random matrices and orbital integrals

An isogeny class of elliptic curves over a finite field is determined by a quadratic Weil polynomial. Gekeler has given a product formula, in terms of congruence considerations involving that polynomial, for the size of such an isogeny class. In this paper, we give a new, transparent proof of this formula; it turns out that this product actually computes an adelic orbital integral which visibly counts the desired cardinality. This answers a question posed by N. Katz.