Computational Algebra Seminar: Creutz -- Arithmetic of Bielliptic Surfaces

 Speaker: Brendan Creutz (University of Canterbury, NZ) 

Title: Arithmetic of Bielliptic Surfaces 

Abstract: A bielliptic surface over the complex numbers is a quotient of a product of
elliptic curves by a finite group acting by a combination of translations and
automorphisms of the elliptic curves.  The study of these surfaces over number fields
has played an important role in our understanding of rational points on algebraic
varieties.  I will review this history and then describe recent computations with Magma
showing that Skorobogatov’s famous bielliptic surface does indeed have a zero-cycle of
degree 1, as predicted by a conjecture of Colliot-Thélène.