Solubility of certain pencils of curves of genus 1, and of the intersection of two quadrics in \(\mathbb P^4\) (Q2766419)

The main object of the paper under review is a pencil of curves of genus 1 which are 2-coverings of certain elliptic curves defined over \(k(t)\) (\(k\) is a number field, \(t\) is the parameter of the pencil). The goal is to formulate conditions under which the Hasse principle holds. The paper is a natural continuation of two earlier ones [\textit{Sir P. Swinnerton-Dyer}, Abelian varieties (ed. W. Barth, K. Hulek and H. Lange), de Gruyter, Berlin, 1993, 273-292 (1995; Zbl 0849.14009)] and \textit{J.-L. Colliot-Thélène, A. N. Skorobogatov}, and \textit{Sir P. Swinnerton-Dyer}, Invent. Math. 134, 579-650 (1998; Zbl 0924.14011)]. One of the assumptions of these papers (the underlying elliptic curves were required to have all their 2-division points defined over \(k(t)\)) is weakened: they only have a single 2-division point defined over \(k(t)\). Writing \(t=y/z\), any such pencil can be brought to the form NEWLINE\[NEWLINE \begin{aligned} \alpha_0U_0^2+\alpha_1U_1^2+\alpha_2U_2^2+\alpha_3U_3^2+2\alpha_4U_2U_3 &= 0,\\ \beta_0U_0^2+\beta_1U_1^2+\beta_2U_2^2+\beta_3U_3^2+2\beta_4U_2U_3 &= 0,\end{aligned}NEWLINE\]NEWLINE where the \(\alpha_i\) and \(\beta_i\) are homogeneous elements of \(\mathfrak o[y,z]\) (\(\mathfrak o\) stands for the ring of integers of \(k\)). Assuming Schinzel's Hypothesis H (a far-reaching generalization of Dirichlet's theorem on primes in an arithmetic progression) and finiteness of the Tate-Shafarevich group of elliptic curves defined over \(k\), the authors formulate several conditions on \(\alpha_i\), \(\beta_i\) (the crucial one, Condition 6, is related to the emptiness of the Brauer-Manin obstruction) which guarantee the existence of a \(k\)-point provided local conditions are everywhere satisfied. Moreover, rational points are Zariski dense on the underlying surface. NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINEIn the second part of the paper, the authors consider non-singular Del Pezzo surfaces of degree 4. They again assume Schinzel's Hypothesis H and finiteness of the Shafarevich-Tate group of elliptic curves and show that necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a rational point on the surface are that rational points exist everywhere locally and the above mentioned Condition 6 holds for a certain pencil of curves related to the surface.