English

Composition of points and Mordell-Weil problem for cubic surfaces

Algebraic Geometry 2016-09-07 v1

Abstract

Let VV be a plane smooth cubic curve over a finitely generated field k.k. The Mordell-Weil theorem for VV states that there is a finite subset PV(k)P\subset V(k) such that the whole V(k)V(k) can be obtained from PP by drawing secants and tangents through pairs of previously constructed points and consecutively adding their new intersection points with V.V. Equivalently, the group of birational transformations of VV generated by reflections with respect to kk-points is finitely generated. In this paper, elaborating an idea from [M3], we establish a Mordell-Weil type finite generation result for some birationally trivial cubic surfaces WW. To the contrary, we prove that the birational automorphism group generated by reflections cannot be finitely generated if W(k)W(k) is infinite.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.math/0011198,
  title  = {Composition of points and Mordell-Weil problem for cubic surfaces},
  author = {D. Kanevsky and Yu. Manin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:math/0011198},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

20 pp., amstex file, no figures

R2 v1 2026-07-22T16:35:56.545Z