Paucity of rational points on fibrations with multiple fibres

Abstract

Given a family of varieties over the projective line, we study the density of fibres that are everywhere locally soluble in the case that components of higher multiplicity are allowed. We use log geometry to formulate a new sparsity criterion for the existence of everywhere locally soluble fibres and formulate new conjectures that generalise previous work of Loughran and Smeets. These conjectures involve geometric invariants of the associated multiplicity orbifolds on the base of the fibration in the spirit of Campana. We give evidence for the conjectures by providing an assortment of bounds using Chebotarev’s theorem and sieve methods, with most of the evidence involving upper bounds.