We study the distribution of the Brauer group and the frequency of the Brauer--Manin obstruction to the Hasse principle and weak approximation in a family of smooth del Pezzo surfaces of degree four over the rationals.
Upper and lower bounds, of the expected order of magnitude, are obtained for the number of rational points of bounded height on any quartic del Pezzo surface over $\mathbb{Q}$ that contains a conic defined over $\mathbb{Q}$.
We discuss Manin's conjecture concerning the distribution of rational points of bounded height on Del Pezzo surfaces, and its refinement by Peyre, and explain applications of universal torsors to counting problems. To illustrate the method, we provide a proof of Manin's conjecture for the unique split singular quartic Del Pezzo surface with a singularity of type D4. (Lectures at the summer school "Equidistribution in number theory", Montreal, August 2005)
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 over the rationals and to examine the distribution of elliptic curves with square-free discriminant.
For any number field k, upper bounds are established for the number of k-rational points of bounded height on non-singular del Pezzo surfaces defined over k, which are equipped with suitable conic bundle structures over k.
This paper surveys recent progress towards the Manin conjecture for (singular and non-singular) del Pezzo surfaces. To illustrate some of the techniques available, an upper bound of the expected order of magnitude is established for a singular del Pezzo surface of degree four.
This paper establishes the Manin conjecture for a certain non-split singular del Pezzo surface of degree four, via an analysis of the corresponding height zeta function.
We determine which singular del Pezzo surfaces are equivariant compactifications of G_a^2, to assist with proofs of Manin's conjecture for such surfaces. Additionally, we give an example of a singular quartic del Pezzo surface that is an equivariant compactification of a semidirect product of G_a and G_m.
For split smooth Del Pezzo surfaces, we analyse the structure of the effective cone and prove a recursive formula for the value of alpha, appearing in the leading constant as predicted by Peyre of Manin's conjecture on the number of rational points of bounded height on the surface. Furthermore, we calculate alpha for all singular Del Pezzo surfaces of degree at least 3.
An asymptotic formula is established for the number of rational points of bounded height on a non-singular quartic del Pezzo surface with a conic bundle structure.
We study the arithmetic of certain del Pezzo surfaces of degree 2. We produce examples of Brauer-Manin obstruction to the Hasse principle, coming from 2- and 4-torsion elements in the Brauer group.
We establish Manin's conjecture for a quartic del Pezzo surface split over Q and having a singularity of type A_3 and containing exactly four lines. It is the first example of split singular quartic del Pezzo surface whose universal torsor is not a hypersurface for which Manin's conjecture is proved.
In this paper we prove that, over a Hilbertian ground field, surfaces with two conic fibrations whose fibres have non-zero intersection product have the Hilbert property. We then give an application of this result, namely the verification of the Hilbert property for certain del Pezzo varieties.
We study the birational properties of geometrically rational surfaces from a derived categorical point of view. In particular, we give a criterion for the rationality of a del Pezzo surface over an arbitrary field, namely, that its derived category decomposes into zero-dimensional components. For del Pezzo surfaces of degree at least 5, we construct explicit semiorthogonal decompositions by subcategories of modules over semisimple algebras arising as endomorphism algebras of vector bundles and we show how to retrieve information about the index of the surface from Brauer classes and Chern clas…
We give an asymptotic expansion for the density of del Pezzo surfaces of degree four in a certain Birch Swinnerton-Dyer family violating the Hasse principle due to a Brauer-Manin obstruction. Under the assumption of Schinzel's hypothesis and the finiteness of Tate-Shafarevich groups for elliptic curves, we obtain an asymptotic formula for the number of all del Pezzo surfaces in the family, which violate the Hasse principle.
In this article, we consider weak del Pezzo surfaces defined over a finite field, and their associated, singular, anticanonical models. We first define arithmetic types for such surfaces, by considering the Frobenius actions on their Picard groups; this extends the classification of Swinnerton-Dyer and Manin for ordinary del Pezzo surfaces. We also show that some invariants of the surfaces only depend on the above type.Then we study an inverse Galois problem for singular del Pezzo surfaces having degree $3\leq d\leq 6$: we describe which types can occur over a given finite field (of odd charac…
Let $f(z)=z^5+az^3+bz^2+cz+d \in \Z[z]$ and let us consider a del Pezzo surface of degree one given by the equation $\cal{E}_{f}: x^2-y^3-f(z)=0$. In this note we prove that if the set of rational points on the curve $E_{a, b}:Y^2=X^3+135(2a-15)X-1350(5a+2b-26)$ is infinite, then the set of rational points on the surface $\cal{E}_{f}$ is dense in the Zariski topology.
We discuss the problem of existence of rational curves on a certain del Pezzo surface from a computational point of view and suggest a computer algorithm implementing search. In particular, our computations reveal that the surface contains 920 rational curves with parametrizations of degree 8 and does not contain rational curves for a smaller degree.
We establish a measure which describes in a precise way the local asymptotic distribution of rational points outside the locally accumulating subvarieties around a general rational point on a del Pezzo surface of degree 6 in the sense of diophantine approximation.
We prove Manin's conjecture for a del Pezzo surface of degree six which has one singularity of type $\mathbf{A}_2$. Moreover, we achieve a meromorphic continuation and explicit expression of the associated height zeta function.