Related papers: Curves that change genus can have arbitrarily many…

We study various generalisations of rationally connected varieties, allowing the connecting curves to be of higher genus. The main focus will be on free curves $f:C\to X$ with large unobstructed deformation space as originally defined by…

A curve over a field k is pointless if it has no k-rational points. We show that there exist pointless genus-3 hyperelliptic curves over a finite field F_q if and only if q < 26, that there exist pointless smooth plane quartics over F_q if…

We resolve a 1983 question of Serre by constructing curves with many points of every genus over every finite field. More precisely, we show that for every prime power q there is a positive constant c_q with the following property: for every…

We prove the following result which was conjectured by Stichtenoth and Xing: let $g$ be the genus of a projective, irreducible non-singular curve over the finite field $\Bbb F_{q^2}$ and whose number of $\Bbb F_{q^2}$-rational points…

We show that finite fields over which there is a curve of a given genus g with its Jacobian having a small exponent, are very rare. This extends a recent result of W. Duke in the case g=1. We also show when g=1 or g=2 that our bounds are…

We show that if $K$ is an arbitrary field and $G$ is a finite group then there exists a curve over $K$ with automorphism group $G$. We also give a positive solution to the weak inverse Galois problem for function fields over an arbitrary…

Let K be a field. Let A be a central simple algebra over K and let X be the associated Brauer-Severi variety over K. It has recently been asked if there exists a genus 1 curve C over K such that K(C) splits A. In other words, is there a…

In positive characteristic, algebraic curves can have many more automorphisms than expected from the classical Hurwitz's bound. There even exist algebraic curves of arbitrary high genus g with more than 16g^4 automorphisms. It has been…

Rational algebraic curves have been intensively studied in the last decades, both from the theoretical and applied point of view. In applications (e.g. level curves, linear homotopy deformation, geometric constructions in computer aided…

We study the question of whether algebraic curves of a given genus g defined over a field K must have points rational over the maximal abelian extension K^{ab} of K. We give: (i) an explicit family of diagonal plane cubic curves with…

This is an extended version of an invited lecture I gave at the Journees Arithmetiques in St. Etienne in July 2009. We discuss the state of the art regarding the problem of finding the set of rational points on a (smooth projective)…

This is a survey on recent results on counting of curves over finite fields. It reviews various results on the maximum number of points on a curve of genus g over a finite field of cardinality q, but the main emphasis is on results on the…

For a given genus $g \geq 1$, we give lower bounds for the maximal number of rational points on a smooth projective absolutely irreducible curve of genus $g$ over ${\mathbb F}_q$. As a consequence of Katz-Sarnak theory, we first get for any…

It is known that for a curve defined over $\mathbb{Q}$ of genus $g \leq 4$, there exists a point on the curve defined over a solvable extension of $\mathbb{Q}$. We relate points on curves of genus $g \geq 5$ over solvable extensions to the…

We show that if f: X --> Y is a finite, separable morphism of smooth curves defined over a finite field F_q, where q is larger than an explicit constant depending only on the degree of f and the genus of X, then f maps X(F_q) surjectively…

If $C$ is a curve over $\mathbb{Q}$ with genus at least $2$ and $C(\mathbb{Q})$ is empty, then the class of fields $K$ of characteristic 0 such that $C(K) = \varnothing$ has a model companion, which we call $C\mathrm{XF}$. The theory…

The gonality of a smooth geometrically connected curve over a field $k$ is the smallest degree of a nonconstant $k$-morphism from the curve to the projective line. In general, the gonality of a curve of genus $g \ge 2$ is at most $2g - 2$.…

We show that one can find two nonisomorphic curves over a field K that become isomorphic to one another over two finite extensions of K whose degrees over K are coprime to one another. More specifically, let K_0 be an arbitrary prime field…

Let $G$ be a finite group. A faithful $G$-variety $X$ is called strongly incompressible if every dominant $G$-equivariant rational map of $X$ onto another faithful $G$-variety $Y$ is birational. We settle the problem of existence of…

Let $A$ be a simple abelian surface over an algebraically closed field $k$. Let $S\subset A(k)$ be the set of torsion points $x$ of $A$ such that there exists a genus $2$ curve $C$ and a map $f: C\to A$ such that $x$ is in the image of $f$,…