We study the asymptotical behaviour of the moduli space of morphisms of given anticanonical degree from a rational curve to a split toric variety, when the degree goes to infinity. We obtain in this case a geometric analogue of Manin’s conjecture about rational points of bounded height on varieties defined over a global field. The study is led through a generating series whose coefficients lie in a Grothendieck ring of motives, the motivic height zeta function. In order to establish convergence properties of this function, we use a notion of motivic Euler product. It relies on a construction of Denef and Loeser which associates a virtual motive to a first order logic ring formula.

We recall the main result of L. Caporaso, J. Harris, and B. Mazur's 1997 paper of ‘Uniformity of rational points.’ It says that the Lang conjecture on the distribution of rational points on varieties of general type implies the uniformity for the numbers of rational points on curves of genus at least 2. In this paper we will investigate its analogue for their heights under the assumption of the Vojta conjecture. Basically, we will show that the Vojta conjecture gives a naturally expected simple uniformity for their heights.

We prove asymptotic formulas for the number of rational points of bounded height on certain equivariant compactifications of the affine plane.