An overview of Manin's conjecture for del Pezzo surfaces

These lecture notes describe the current state of affairs for Manin's conjecture in the context of del Pezzo surfaces.

This paper establishes the Manin conjecture for a certain non-split singular del Pezzo surface of degree four, via an analysis of the corresponding height zeta function.

In this paper the height zeta function associated to a certain singular del Pezzo surface of degree four is studied. If $U$ denotes the open subset formed by deleting the unique line from this surface, then an asymptotic formula for the number of rational points of bounded height on $U$ is established which verifies the Manin conjecture.

The Manin-Peyre conjecture is established for a split singular quintic del Pezzo surface with singularity type $\mathbf{A}_2$ and two split singular quartic del Pezzo surfaces with singularity types $\mathbf{A}_3+\mathbf{A}_1$ and $\mathbf{A}_4$ respectively. We use a unified and different slightly method from the previous and improve their error terms. Our method is general and can handle most of singular del Pezzo surfaces of degree $d\geq 3$.

Given a nonsingular quartic del Pezzo surface, a conjecture of Manin predicts the density of rational points on the open subset of the surface formed by deleting the lines. We prove that this prediction is of the correct order of magnitude for a particular surface.

An asymptotic formula is established for the number of rational points of bounded height on a non-singular quartic del Pezzo surface with a conic bundle structure.

For split smooth Del Pezzo surfaces, we analyse the structure of the effective cone and prove a recursive formula for the value of alpha, appearing in the leading constant as predicted by Peyre of Manin's conjecture on the number of rational points of bounded height on the surface. Furthermore, we calculate alpha for all singular Del Pezzo surfaces of degree at least 3.

Let X be a surface whose Cox ring has a single relation satisfying moreover a kind of linearity property. Under a simple assumption, we show that the geometric Manin's conjectures hold for some degrees lying in the dual of the effective cone of X (in particular, for those degrees the moduli space of morphisms has the expected dimension). The result applies to a class of generalized del Pezzo surfaces which has been intensively studied in the context of the arithmetic Manin's ...

Among geometrically rational surfaces, del Pezzo surfaces of degree two over a field k containing at least one point are arguably the simplest that are not known to be unirational over k. Looking for k-rational curves on these surfaces, we extend some earlier work of Manin on this subject. We then focus on the case where k is a finite field, where we show that all except possibly three explicit del Pezzo surfaces of degree two are unirational over k.

The Manin conjecture is established for a split singular del Pezzo surface of degree four, with singularity type A_4.