Related papers: The Hasse principle for lines on del Pezzo surface…
We investigate the question of the existence of a non-vanishing section of the tangent bundle on a smooth affine quadric hypersurface $Q^o$ over a given perfect field $k$. In case $Q^o$ admits a $k$-rational point, we give necessary and…
A quasigeodesic is a curve on the surface of a convex polyhedron that has $\le \pi$ surface to each side at every point. In contrast, a geodesic has exactly $\pi$ to each side and so can never pass through a vertex, whereas quasigeodesics…
We show that if $X\subseteq \mathbb{P}^{n-1}$, defined over $\mathbb{Q}$ by a cubic form that splits off two forms, with $n\geq 11$, then $X(\mathbb{Q})$ is non-empty. The same holds for an $(m_1,m_2)$-form with $m_1\geq 4$ and $m_2\geq 5$.
Some classes of cubic fourfolds are birational to fibrations over $P^2$, where the fibers are rational surfaces. This is the case for cubics containing a plane (resp. an elliptic ruled surface), where the fibers are quadric surfaces (resp.…
We construct examples of smooth surfaces S in P^6 with no trisecant lines. This list includes examples of surfaces not cut out by quadrics. We prove that unless S has a finite number of disjoint $(-1)$-lines, and each one meets some other…
We prove Manin's conjecture for a split singular quartic del Pezzo surface with singularity type $2\Aone$ and eight lines. This is achieved by equipping the surface with a conic bundle structure. To handle the sum over the family of conics,…
If $X = V(f) \subset \mathbb P^N$ is a reduced complex hypersurface, the hessian of $f$ (or by abusing the terminology the hessian of $X$) is the determinant of the matrix of the second derivatives of the form $f$, that is the determinant…
This article deals with the existence of hypersurfaces minimizing general shape functionals under certain geometric constraints. We consider as admissible shapes orientable hypersurfaces satisfying a so-called reach condition, also known as…
It is known that the Brauer--Manin obstruction to the Hasse principle is vacuous for smooth Fano hypersurfaces of dimension at least $3$ over any number field. Moreover, for such varieties it follows from a general conjecture of…
For given non-zero integers a,b,q we investigate the density of integer solutions (x,y) to the binary cubic congruence ax^2+by^3=0 (mod q). We use this to establish the Manin conjecture for a singular del Pezzo surface of degree 2 defined…
We show that any rational cubic hypersurface of dimension at least 33 defined over a number field $K$ vanishes on a $K$-rational projective line, reducing the previous lower bound of Wooley by two. For $K=\mathbb Q$ we can reduce the bound…
A line arrangement of a smooth cubic surface is a subset of the set of lines on the cubic surface. We define a notion of Zariski pairs of line arrangements on general cubic surfaces, and make the complete list of these Zariski pairs.
A partial cube is a graph having an isometric embedding in a hypercube. Partial cubes are characterized by a natural equivalence relation on the edges, whose classes are called zones. The number of zones determines the minimal dimension of…
Given a nonsingular quartic del Pezzo surface, a conjecture of Manin predicts the density of rational points on the open subset of the surface formed by deleting the lines. We prove that this prediction is of the correct order of magnitude…
We classify geometrically integral regular del Pezzo surfaces which are not geometrically normal over imperfect fields of positive characteristic. Based on this classification, we show that a three-dimensional terminal del Pezzo fibration…
We propose and compare various techiques available to produce smooth cubic hypersurfaces over a non-algebraically-closed field which have rational points but which are not stably rational over their ground field.
We prove several boundedness statements for geometrically integral normal del Pezzo surfaces $X$ over arbitrary fields. We give an explicit sharp bound on the irregularity if $X$ is canonical or regular. In particular, we show that wild…
In a 1975 paper of Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer, a number of explicit norm form cubic surfaces are shown to fail the Hasse Principle. They make a correspondence between this failure and the Brauer--Manin obstruction, recently discovered by…
For a cubic hypersurface $X$, work of Galkin--Shinder and Voisin shows the existence of a birational map relating the Hilbert scheme of two points $X^{[2]}$ with a certain projective bundle over $X$. Belmans--Fu--Raedschelders show that…
Let $X$ be a cubic surface over a global field $k$. We prove that a Brauer-Manin obstruction to the existence of $k$-points on $X$ will persist over every extension $L/k$ with degree relatively prime to $3$. In other words, a cubic surface…