Weak approximation on del Pezzo surfaces of degree 1 (Q952437)

The main object of the paper under review is a del Pezzo surface of degree 1 defined over a perfect field \(k\) (=a smooth sextic hypersurface in the weighted projective space \(\mathbb P_k(1,1,2,3)\)). The author produces an explicit family of counter-examples to weak approximation for minimal diagonal del Pezzo surfaces of degree 1 defined over \(\mathbb Q\). These are the first known counter-examples (note that any del Pezzo surface of degree 1 has a rational point). He shows that these counter-examples are accounted for by the Brauer--Manin obstruction arising from the class of an explicitly given cyclic algebra in \(\text{Br}(X)/\text{Br}(\mathbb Q)\). Some of intermediate results of the paper are of their own interest. The author lists all possible values of \(H^1(\text{Gal}(\bar k/k), \text{Pic}(\overline X))\) for minimal diagonal del Pezzo surfaces of degree 1 defined over a perfect field of characteristic different from 2 and 3 (there are 14 possibilities) and shows that only seven groups occur in the case \(k=\mathbb Q\). Furthermore, he develops some general strategy for identifying classes of cyclic algebras from \(\text{Br}(X)/\text{Br}(k)\) with cohomology classes in \(H^1(\text{Gal}(\bar k/k), \text{Pic}(\overline X))\) (for any smooth geometrically integral variety \(X\) over a number field having rational points everywhere locally).