Varieties with too many rational points (Q522043)

The authors of the paper under review work over a number field \(k\) and focus on rational points on Fano varieties, i.e., non-singular projective varieties with ample anti-canonical bundle. In order to count rational points on a Fano variety \(X\), one classically looks at the class of anti-canonical height functions (associated to a choice of adelic metric on the anti-canonical bundle) \[ H(x) = \prod_{v\in \text{Val}(k)}\|s(x)\|_v^{-1}, \] where \(s\) is any local section of the anti-canonical bundle defined and non-zero at \(x\in X(k)\). This height function is actually independent of \(s\). The authors investigate the famous conjecture formulated by \textit{J. Franke}, \textit{Y. I. Manin} and \textit{Y. Tschinkel} in [Invent. Math. 95, No. 2, 421--435 (1989; Zbl 0674.14012)] predicting the asymptotic behaviour of the counting functions of rational points of bounded height. More precisely, the conjecture predicts the existence of an open subset \(U\subset X\) such that for any anti-canonical height function \(H\) there exists a constant \(c_{U,H}>0\) such that \[ \#\{x\in U(k) \ | \ H(x)\le B\} \sim c_{U,H} B(\log B)^{\rho(X)-1}, \] where \(\rho(X)\) is the Picard rank of \(X\). \textit{E. Peyre} conjectured in [Duke Math. J. 79, No. 1, 101--218 (1995; Zbl 0901.14025)] an explicit value \(c_{U,\text{Peyre}}\) for the previous constant. The authors of the present paper study Fano varieties for which the counting functions have the same order of magnitude as the counting function associated to a proper closed subvariety (cf. Theorem 1.2 and Corollary 1.3), providing explicit conditions under which a Fano variety gives a counter-example to Peyre's conjecture. The main results of the paper under review are proved in Section 2 and applied to special classes of Fano varieties such as complete intersections (Section 3), Fano threefolds (Section 4) and some quadric bundles in biprojective space (Section 5).