In this paper, we investigate the theory of heights in a family of stacky curves following recent work of Ellenberg, Satriano, and Zureick-Brown. We first give an elementary construction of a height which is seen to be dual to theirs. We count rational points having bounded ESZ-B height on a particular stacky curve, answering a question of Ellenberg, Satriano, and Zureick-Brown. We also show that when the Euler characteristic of stacky curves is non-positive, the ESZ-B height coming from the anti-canonical divisor class fails to have the Northcott property. We prove that a stacky version of a conjecture of Vojta is equivalent to the $abc$-conjecture.

For $R(z, w)\in \mathbb {C}(z, w)$ of degree at least 2 in w, we show that the number of rational functions $f(z)\in \mathbb {C}(z)$ solving the difference equation $f(z+1)=R(z, f(z))$ is finite and bounded just in terms of the degrees of R in the two variables. This complements a result of Yanagihara, who showed that any finite-order meromorphic solution to this sort of difference equation must be a rational function. We prove a similar result for the differential equation $f'(z)=R(z, f(z))$ , building on a result of Eremenko.

We prove a 1966 conjecture of Tate concerning the Artin–Tate pairing on the Brauer group of a surface over a finite field, which is the analog of the Cassels–Tate pairing. Tate asked if this pairing is always alternating and we find an affirmative answer, which is somewhat surprising in view of the work of Poonen–Stoll on the Cassels–Tate pairing. Our method is based on studying a connection between the Artin–Tate pairing and (generalizations of) Steenrod operations in étale cohomology. Inspired by an analogy to the algebraic topology of manifolds, we develop tools allowing us to calculate the relevant étale Steenrod operations in terms of characteristic classes.

We explain how the André–Oort conjecture for a general Shimura variety can be deduced from the hyperbolic Ax–Lindemann conjecture, a good lower bound for Galois orbits of special points and the definability, in the $o$-minimal structure ${ \mathbb{R} }_{\mathrm{an} , \mathrm{exp} } $, of the restriction to a fundamental set of the uniformizing map of a Shimura variety. These ingredients are known in some important cases. As a consequence a proof of the André–Oort conjecture for projective special subvarieties of ${ \mathcal{A} }_{6}^{N} $ for an arbitrary integer $N$ is given.

In this article we will show that there are infinitely many symmetric, integral 3 × 3 matrices, with zeros on the diagonal, whose eigenvalues are all integral. We will do this by proving that the rational points on a certain non-Kummer, singular $\text{K3}$ surface are dense. We will also compute the entire Néron–Severi group of this surface and find all low degree curves on it.

We prove a relation between a generating series for the heights of Heegner cycles on the arithmetic surface associated with a Shimura curve and the second term in the Laurent expansion at s = ½ of an Eisenstein series of weight $\frac32$ for SL(2). On the geometric side, a typical coefficient of the generating series involves the Faltings heights of abelian surfaces isogenous to a product of CM elliptic curves, an archimedean contribution, and contributions from vertical components in the fibers of bad reduction. On the analytic side, these terms arise via the derivatives of local Whittaker functions. It should be noted that s = ½ is not the central point for the functional equation of the Eisenstein series in question. Moreover, the first term of the Laurent expansion at s = ½ coincides with the generating function for the degrees of the Heegner cycles on the generic fiber and, in particular, does not vanish.