We will look at the arithmitic properties of cubic surfaces. The main focus will be on 27 the lines and the Galois action on them.Different descriptions of the moduli space of cubic surfaces are used to construct several Galois groups.Finally we will inspect the Manin conjecture for these surfaces.
The goal of this talk is to report on a project to compute the Picard rank for certain K3 surfaces. The methods are based on reduction modulo p. They will be explained in some detail and examples will be given.At the end of the talk, a statistical test will be presented showing that for each K3 surface in two large samples, suitable primes may be found and the Picard rank may be determined. The samples are motivated by classical families considered by 19th century geometers.
