The determinant method gives upper bounds for the number of rational points of bounded height on or near algebraic varieties defined over global fields. There is a real-analytic version of the method due to Bombieri and Pila and a p-adic version due to Heath-Brown. The aim of our talk is to describe a global refinement of the p-adic method and some applications like a uniform bound for non-singular cubic curves which improves upon earlier bounds of Ellenberg-Venkatesh and Heath-Brown.

I will speak about joint work with Jacob Tsimerman. Let E be an elliptic curve parameterized by a modular (or Shimura) curve. There are a number of results (..., Buium-Poonen, Kuhne) to the effect that the images of CM points are (under suitable hypotheses) linearly independent in E. We consider this issue in the setting of the Zilber-Pink conjecture and prove a result which improves previous results in some aspects

Patching was first introduced as an approach to the Inverse Galois Problem. The technique was then extended to a more algebraic setting and used to prove a local-global principle by D. Harbater, J. Hartmann and D. Krashen. I will present an adaptation of the method of patching to the setting of Berkovich analytic curves. This will then be used to prove a local-global principle for function fields of curves that generalizes that of the above mentioned authors.