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.
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