On the arithmetic of del Pezzo surfaces of degree 2 (Q4664121)

A del Pezzo surface of degree \(d\) is an algebraic surface isomorphic over an algebraic closure of the base field to the projective plane blown up in \(9-d\) points. Del Pezzos defined over the rationals have interesting arithmetic; notably, the Hasse principle holds for surfaces of degree \(\geq 5\) but not necessarily for degrees 2, 3, 4; its failure for degrees 3 and 4 has been quite extensively studied [see, e.g. \textit{J.-L. Colliot-Thélène, D. Kanevsky} and \textit{J.-J. Sansuc}, in: Diophantine approximation and transcendence theory, Lect. Notes Math. 1290, 1--108 (1987; Zbl 0639.14018); \textit{J.-L. Colliot-Thélène, J.-J. Sansuc} and \textit{P. Swinnerton-Dyer}, J. Reine Angew. Math. 373, 37--107 (1987; Zbl 0622.14029) and ibid. 374, 72--168 (1987; Zbl 0622.14030)]. The present paper studies some degree 2 surfaces, namely, those than can be represented as double covers of the plane branched in the diagonal quartic \(Ax^4+By^4+Cz^4=0\), where \(A,B,C\) are non-zero integers. (Any degree 2 del Pezzo can be represented as a double cover of the plane branched in a non-singular quartic). For such a double cover \(S=S(A,B,C)\), the group \(\text{Br}(S)/\text{Br}({\mathbb Q})\) is calculated; the generic value is \({\mathbb Z}/2\), but there are five other possibilities (including the trivial group). The calculation is done by showing that \(\text{Br}(S)/\text{Br}{\mathbb Q})\) is isomorphic to \(H^1(\text{Gal}(F/{\mathbb Q},\text{Pic}(S_F))\) where \(F\) is a Galois extension of \(\mathbb Q\) such that \(\text{Pic}(S_F)=\text{Pic}(S_{\bar{\mathbb Q}})\), and computing the group cohomology. (The computations used the computer algebra system MAGMA, and a note added in proof indicates that improvements in MAGMA's group cohomology support means that some of these computations can now be made more directly than is done in the paper.) For certain surfaces (e.g. \(S(-2p,-2p,2)\) where \(p\) is a prime \(\equiv 3\) mod 4), explicit constructions of Azumaya algebras representing non-trivial elements of \(\text{Br}(S)/\text{Br}({\mathbb Q})\) are given, which yield Brauer-Manin obstructions to the Hasse principle. A recipe for testing the presence of the Brauer-Manin obstruction in the generic case is given, with examples. An appendix shows how the techniques of the paper can be used to simplify the analysis of the Brauer-Manin obstruction on a diagonal cubic given in the paper of Colliot-Thélène, Kanevsky and Sansuc referenced above.