Rational points on cubic hypersurfaces over \(\mathbb F_q(t)\) (Q2355779)

The main theorem of the paper under review is to prove that the Hasse principle is the only obstruction to the existence of rational points on a cubic hypersurface of dimension at least \(6\) over a function field \(\mathbb{F}_q(t)\) of characteristic at least \(5\). It is known that the Hasse principle is trivial in dimension at least \(10\) in this case. The approach to the proof is to adapting methods of Swinnerton-Dyer in the number field case to the function field case, which has the advantage of making the results unconditional. (Swinnerton-Dyer's results are conditional on the finiteness of the Tate-Shafarevich group.) The authors also improve the classical lower bound of \(10\) mentioned above, by showing that any cubic hypersurface of dimension at least \(8\) (again over a function field of characteristic at least \(5\)) satisfies both the Hasse principle and weak approximation. The main techniques of the proof are Weyl differencing in exponential sums arising from applying the circle method.