The non-degeneracy of the canonical $p$-adic height pairing defined by Perrin-Riou and Schneider on an elliptic curve over a number field with good, ordinary reduction is still unknown.

Following the work done for the real-valued pairing, the behaviour of the $p$-adic height is analysed as a point varies on a section of a family of elliptic curves, and so new information is obtained about this pairing. In particular, the variation is $p$-adically continuous and the non-degeneracy of a set of sections can be checked simultaneously for almost all elements of the family. The paper contains some conjectures about the valuation of the $p$-adic regulator and its consequences for the growth of the Mordell–Weil group in cyclotomic $\mathbb{Z}_p$-extensions.