English

Quartic surface, its bitangents and rational points

Number Theory 2026-03-04 v4

Abstract

Let X be a smooth quartic surface not containing lines, defined over a number field K. We prove that there are only finitely many bitangents to X which are defined over K. This result can be interpreted as saying that a certain surface, having vanishing irregularity, contains only finitely many rational points. In our proof, we use the geometry of lines of the quartic double solid associated to X. In a somewhat opposite direction, we show that on any quartic surface X over a number field K, the set of algebraic points in X(\overeline K) which are quadratic over a suitable finite extension K' of K is Zariski-dense.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2010.08623,
  title  = {Quartic surface, its bitangents and rational points},
  author = {Pietro Corvaja and Francesco Zucconi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2010.08623},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

This is the final version of the paper

R2 v1 2026-06-23T19:24:50.838Z