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The blow-up of the anticanonical base point on a del Pezzo surface $X$ of degree 1 gives rise to a rational elliptic surface $\mathscr{E}$ with only irreducible fibers. The sections of minimal height of $\mathscr{E}$ are in correspondence with the $240$ exceptional curves on $X$. A natural question arises when studying the configuration of these curves: if a point on $X$ is contained in 'many' exceptional curves, it is torsion on its fiber on $\mathscr{E}$? In 2005, Kuwata proved for the analogous question on del Pezzo surfaces of degree $2$, where there are 56 exceptional curves, that if 'many' equals $4$ or more, the answer is yes. In this paper, we prove that for del Pezzo surfaces of degree 1, the answer is yes if 'many' equals $9$ or more. Moreover, we give counterexamples where a \textsl{non}-torsion point lies in the intersection of $7$ exceptional curves. We give partial results for the still open case of 8 intersecting exceptional curves., Comment: 14 pages

Let $k$ be an infinite field of characteristic 0, and $X$ a del Pezzo surface of degree $d$ with at least one $k$-rational point. Various methods from algebraic geometry and arithmetic statistics have shown the Zariski density of the set $X(k)$ of $k$-rational points in $X$ for $d\geq2$ (under an extra condition for $d=2$), but fail to work in generality when the degree of $X$ is 1, leaving a large class of del Pezzo surfaces for which the question of density of rational points is still open. In this paper, we prove the Zariski density of $X(k)$ when $X$ has degree 1 and is represented in the weighted projective space $\mathbb{P}(2,3,1,1)$ with coordinates $x,y,z,w$ by an equation of the form $y^2=x^3+az^6+bz^3w^3+cw^6$ for $a,b,c\in k$ with $a,c$ non-zero, under the condition that the elliptic surface obtained by blowing up the base point of the anticanonical linear system $|-K_X|$ contains a smooth fiber above a point in $\mathbb{P}^1\setminus\{(1:0),(0:1)\}$ with positive rank over $k$. When $k$ is of finite type over $\mathbb{Q}$, this condition is sufficient and necessary., Comment: 12 pages, 2 figures, with an appendix by Jean-Louis Colliot-Th\'el\`ene, as published in Advances in Mathematics

Rizzo showed that the family of elliptic curves $\mathcal{W}(t) :y^2=x^3+tx^2-(t+3)x+1$, a well-known example of Washington, has root number $W(\mathcal{W}(t))=-1$ for all $t\in\mathbb{Z}$. In this paper we generalize this example and identify the families of small degree on which this phenomenon happens. Motivated by results from David, Bettin and Delaunay (arXiv:1612.03095) and Desjardins (arXiv:1810.12787), we study in detail the two families $\mathcal{F}_s(t):y^2=x^3+3tx^2+3sx+st$ and $\mathcal{L}_{w,s,v}(t): wy^2=x^3+3(t^2+v)x^2+3sx+s(t^2+v)$ and describe necessary and sufficient conditions for which subfamilies of $\mathcal{F}_s(t)$ have constant root number on integer fibres. We further prove similar but partial results on $\mathcal{L}_{w,s,v}(t)$. Our results give examples of subfamilies for which there is rank elevation at integer fibres., Comment: 35 pages, comments welcome

In this paper, we give an effective and efficient algorithm which on input takes non-zero integers $A$ and $B$ and on output produces the generators of the Mordell-Weil group of the elliptic curve over $\mathbb{Q}(t)$ given by an equation of the form $y^2=x^3+At^6+B$. Our method uses the correspondence between the 240 lines of a del Pezzo surface of degree 1 and the sections of minimal Shioda height on the corresponding elliptic surface over $\overline{\mathbb{Q}}$. For most rational elliptic surfaces, the density of the rational points is proven by various authors, but the results are partial in case when the surface has a minimal model that is a del Pezzo surface of degree 1. In particular, the ones given by the Weierstrass equation $y^2=x^3+At^6+B$, are among the few for which the question is unsolved, because the root number of the fibres can be constant. Our result proves the density of the rational points in many of these cases where it was previously unknown., Comment: 31 pages, 7 figures, to appear in Annales de l'Institut Fourier

In a previous article, the author proves that the value of the root number varies in a non-isotrivial family of elliptic curves indexed by one parameter $t$ running through $\mathbb{Q}$. However, a well-known example of Washington has root number $-1$ for every fiber when $t$ runs through $\mathbb{Z}$. Such examples are rare since, as proven in this paper, the root number of the integer fibers varies for a large class of families of elliptic curves. Our results depends on the squarefree conjecture and Chowla's conjecture, and are unconditional in many cases., Comment: 17 pages, \`a para\^itre aux Annales Math\'ematiques du Qu\'ebec

We give an explicit description of the behaviour of the root number in the family given by twists of an elliptic curve $E$ by the rational values of a polynomial $f(T)$. In particular, we give a criterion (on $f$ depending on $E$) for the family to have a constant root number over $\mathbb{Q}$. This completes a work of Rohrlich: we detail the behaviour of the root number when $E$ has bad reduction over $\mathbb{Q}^{ab}$ and we treat the cases $j(E)=0,1728$ which were not considered previously., Comment: 19 pages, to appear in Journal de Th\'eorie des Nombres de Bordeaux

We consider the K3 surfaces that arise as double covers of the elliptic modular surface of level 5, $R_{5,5}$. Such surfaces have a natural elliptic fibration induced by the fibration on $R_{5,5}$. Moreover, they admit several other elliptic fibrations. We describe such fibrations in terms of linear systems of curves on $R_{5,5}$. This has a major advantage over other methods of classification of elliptic fibrations, namely, a simple algorithm that has as input equations of linear systems of curves in the projective plane yields a Weierstrass equation for each elliptic fibration. We deal in detail with the cases for which the double cover is branched over the two reducible fibers of type $I_5$ and for which it is branched over two smooth fibers, giving a complete list of elliptic fibrations for these two scenarios., Comment: 32 pages

Let $\mathscr{E}\rightarrow\mathbb{P}^1_\mathbb{Q}$ be a non-trivial rational elliptic surface over $\mathbb{Q}$ with base $\mathbb{P}^1_\mathbb{Q}$ (with a section). We conjecture that any non-trivial elliptic surface has a Zariski-dense set of $\mathbb{Q}$-rational points. In this paper we work on solving the conjecture in case $\mathscr{E}$ is rational by means of geometric and analytic methods. First, we show that for $\mathscr{E}$ rational, the set $\mathscr{E}(\mathbb{Q})$ is Zariski-dense when $\mathscr{E}$ is isotrivial with non-zero $j$-invariant and when $\mathscr{E}$ is non-isotrivial with a fiber of type $II^*$, $III^*$, $IV^*$ or $I^*_m$ ($m\geq0$). We also use the parity conjecture to prove analytically the density on a certain family of isotrivial rational elliptic surfaces with $j=0$, and specify cases for which neither of our methods leads to the proof of our conjecture., Comment: 32 pages. To appear in Acta Arithmetica

We show the density of rational points on non-isotrivial elliptic surfaces by studying the variation of the root numbers among the fibers of these surfaces, conditionally to two analytic number theory conjectures (the squarefree conjecture and Chowla's conjecture). This is a weaker statement than the one found in a preprint of Helfgott which proves (under the same assumptions) that the average root number is $0$ when the surface admits a place of multiplicative reduction. However, we use a different technique. The conjectures involved impose a restriction on the degree of the irreducible factors of the discriminant of the surfaces. Moreover, we manage to drop the squarefree conjecture assumption under some technical hypotheses, and show thus unconditionally the variation of the root number on many elliptic surfaces, without imposing a bound for the degree of the irreducible factors. Under the parity conjecture, this guarantees the density of the rational points on these surfaces., Comment: 33 pages. To appear in JLMS. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:0911.3881 by other authors