Abstract
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 Manin. We extend their work to show that a larger set of cubic surfaces has a Brauer–Manin obstruction to the Hasse principle, thus verifying the Colliot-Thélène–Sansuc conjecture for infinitely many cubic surfaces.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
B.J. Birch, P. Swinnerton-Dyer, The Hasse problem for rational surfaces. J. Reine Angew. Math. 274(275), 164–174 (1975)
W. Bosma, J. Cannon, C. Playoust, The Magma algebra system. I. The user language. J. Symb. Comput. 24(3-4), 235–265 (1997); Computational algebra and number theory (London, 1993)
J.W.S. Cassels, M.J.T. Guy, On the Hasse principle for cubic surfaces. Mathematika 13(02), 111–120 (1966)
J.-L. Colliot-Thélène, Points rationnels sur les fibrations, in Higher Dimensional Varieties and Rational Points, ed. by K.J. Böröczky, J. Kollár, T. Szamuely (Springer, Heidelberg, 2003), pp. 171–221
J.-L. Colliot-Thélène, J.-J. Sansuc, La descente sur les variétés rationnelles, in Journées de Géométrie Algébrique d’Angers, Juillet 1979, ed. by A. Beauville (Sijthof and Noordhof, Leiden, 1980), pp. 223–237
J.-L. Colliot-Thélène, D. Kanevsky, J.-J. Sansuc, Arithmétique des surfaces cubiques diagonales, in Diophantine Approximation and Transcendence Theory (Springer, Heidelberg, 1987), pp. 1–108
P. Corn, Del Pezzo surfaces and the Brauer–Manin obstruction. PhD thesis, University of California, Berkely (2005)
A.S. Elsenhans, J. Jahnel, On the order three Brauer classes for cubic surfaces. Open Math. 10(3), 903–926 (2012)
A.S. Elsenhans, J. Jahnel, Cubic surfaces violating the Hasse principle are Zariski dense in the moduli scheme. Adv. Math. 280, 360–378 (2015)
Y. Harpaz, O. Wittenberg, On the fibration method for zero-cycles and rational points. Ann. Math. 183(1), 229–295 (2016)
J. Jahnel, Brauer Groups, Tamagawa Measures, and Rational Points on Algebraic Varieties, vol. 198 (American Mathematical Society, Providence, 2014)
Y.I. Manin, Le groupe de Brauer-Grothendieck en géométrie diophantienne, in Actes du Congres International des Mathématiciens, vol. 1 (World Scientific, Singapore, 1971), pp. 401–411
Y.I. Manin, Cubic Forms: Algebra, Geometry, Arithmetic, vol. 4 (North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1974)
H. Nishimura, Some remarks on rational points. Mem. Coll. Sci. Univ. Kyoto, Ser. A Math. 29(2), 189–192 (1955)
J.P. Serre, Local Fields, vol. 67 (Springer, New York, 1979)
H.P.F. Swinnerton-Dyer, The Brauer group of cubic surfaces. Math. Proc. Camb. Philos. Soc. 113(03), 449–460 (1993)
H.P.F. Swinnerton-Dyer, Brauer–Manin obstructions on some del Pezzo surfaces. Math. Proc. Camb. Philos. Soc. 125(02), 193–198 (1999)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Appendix
Appendix
Magma Code for Defining Equation Computation
> R<phi_0,phi_1,phi_2,psi_0,psi_1,psi_2,theta, thetabar,d> := PolynomialRing(Rationals(),9); > Q := FieldOfFractions(R); > A4<A,B,C,D> := AffineSpace(Q,4); > polys := [1+A∗phi_0+C∗psi_0, > theta∗(1+phi_1∗A+psi_1∗C)-(B∗phi_1+D∗psi_1), > thetabar∗(1+phi_2∗A+psi_2∗C)-(B∗phi_2+D∗psi_2), > (B∗phi_0+D∗psi_0)∗(B∗phi_1+D∗psi_1)∗ (B∗phi_2+D∗psi_2)-d∗theta∗thetabar]; > > S := Scheme(A4,polys); > f := ClearDenominators(GroebnerBasis(S))[4]; > cos := Coefficients(f); > > Factorization(R!cos[1]); [ <theta - thetabar, 1>, <phi_1∗psi_2 - phi_2∗psi_1, 2>, <phi_0∗psi_2 - phi_2∗psi_0, 2>, <phi_0∗psi_1 - phi_1∗psi_0, 2> ] > Factorization(R!cos[2]); [ <phi_1∗psi_2 - phi_2∗psi_1, 1>, <phi_0∗psi_2 - phi_2∗psi_0, 1>, <phi_0∗psi_1 - phi_1∗psi_0, 1>, <phi_0∗psi_1 - phi_0∗psi_2 - phi_1∗psi_0 + phi_1∗psi_2 + phi_2∗psi_0 - phi_2∗psi_1, 1>, <phi_0∗phi_1∗psi_2∗theta∗thetabar - 1/2∗phi_0∗phi_1∗psi_2∗thetabar̂2 + 1/2∗phi_0∗phi_2∗psi_1∗thetâ2 - phi_0∗phi_2∗psi_1∗theta∗thetabar - 1/2∗phi_1∗phi_2∗psi_0∗thetâ2 + 1/2∗phi_1∗phi_2∗psi_0∗thetabar̂2, 1> ] > Factorization(R!cos[3]); [ <thetabar, 1>, <theta, 1>, <phi_0∗psi_1 - phi_0∗psi_2 - phi_1∗psi_0 + phi_1∗psi_2 + phi_2∗psi_0 - phi_2∗psi_1, 2>, <phi_0̂2∗phi_1̂2∗psi_2̂2∗thetabar + 2∗phi_0̂2∗phi_1∗phi_2∗psi_1∗psi_2∗theta - 2∗phi_0̂2∗phi_1∗phi_2∗psi_1∗psi_2∗thetabar - phi_0̂2∗phi_2̂2∗psi_1̂2∗theta - 2∗phi_0∗phi_1̂2∗phi_2∗psi_0∗psi_2∗theta + 2∗phi_0∗phi_1∗phi_2̂2∗psi_0∗psi_1∗thetabar + phi_1̂2∗phi_2̂2∗psi_0̂2∗theta - phi_1̂2∗phi_2̂2∗psi_0̂2∗thetabar, 1> ] > Factorization(&+ [t : t in Terms(R!cos[4]) | not IsDivisibleBy(t,d)]); [ <thetabar, 2>, <theta, 2>, <phi_2, 1>, <phi_1, 1>, <phi_0, 1>, <phi_0∗psi_1 - phi_0∗psi_2 - phi_1∗psi_0 + phi_1∗psi_2 + phi_2∗psi_0 - phi_2∗psi_1, 3> ] > Factorization(&+ [t : t in Terms(R!cos[4]) | IsDivisibleBy(t,d)]); [ <d, 1>, <phi_0∗phi_1∗psi_2∗thetabar - phi_0∗phi_2∗psi_1∗theta + phi_1∗phi_2∗psi_0∗theta - phi_1∗phi_2∗psi_0∗thetabar, 3> ]
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s) and the Association for Women in Mathematics
About this paper
Cite this paper
West, M. (2018). On Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer’s Cubic Surfaces. In: Bouw, I., Ozman, E., Johnson-Leung, J., Newton, R. (eds) Women in Numbers Europe II. Association for Women in Mathematics Series, vol 11. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74998-3_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74998-3_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-74997-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-74998-3
eBook Packages: Mathematics and StatisticsMathematics and Statistics (R0)