Two improvements in Birch's theorem on forms
Abstract
Let be a Birch field, that is, a field for which every diagonal form of odd degree in sufficiently many variables admits a non-zero solution; for example, could be the field of rational numbers. Let be homogeneous forms of odd degree over in variables, and let be the variety they cut out. Birch proved if is sufficiently large then contains a non-zero point. We prove two results which show that is actually quite large. First, the Zariski closure of has bounded codimension in . And second, if the 's have sufficiently high strength then is in fact Zariski dense in . The proofs use recent results on strength, and our methods build on recent work of Bik, Draisma, and Snowden, which established similar improvements to Brauer's theorem on forms.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2406.18498,
title = {Two improvements in Birch's theorem on forms},
author = {Amichai Lampert and Andrew Snowden},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2406.18498},
year = {2024}
}
Comments
16 pages