The Picard group of Brauer-Severi varieties (Q1738235)

A Brauer-Severi variety \(B/k\) over a perfect field \(k\) is a projective variety of dimension \(n\) isomorphic over \(\bar{k}\) to \(\mathbb{P}^n_k\). The Picard group of \(B\) is isomorphic to \(\mathbb{Z}\) (see [\textit{P. Gille} and \textit{T. Szamuely}, Central simple algebras and Galois cohomology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2006; Zbl 1137.12001)]). The paper under review provides an explicit generator of the Picard group of any Brauer-Severi variety corresponding to a cyclic algebra in its class inside the Brauer group \(\mathrm{Br}(k)\) of \(k\). In particular, for any Brauer-Severi surface \(B\) and any integer \(r\geq 1\), the authors obtain a concrete generator for \(r \mathrm{Pic}(B)\) from twists of a Fermat type smooth plane curves.