Elekes-Szabó for collinearity on cubic surfaces

Abstract

We study the orchard problem on cubic surfaces. We classify possibly reducible cubic surfaces $X\subseteq \mathbb{P}^3(\C)$ with smooth components on which there exist families of finite sets (of unbounded size) with quadratically many 3-rich lines which do not concentrate (in a natural sense) on any projective plane. Namely, we prove that such a family exists precisely when $X$ is a union of three planes sharing a common line. Along the way, we obtain a general result about nilpotency of groups admitting an algebraic action satisfying an Elekes-Szabó condition, and we prove the following purely algebrogeometric statement: if the composition of four Geiser involutions through sufficiently generic points $a,b,c,d$ on a smooth irreducible cubic surface has infinitely many fixed points, then a single plane contains $a,b,c,d$ and all but finitely many of the fixed points.

v2: misc minor improvements; v3: plug gap in proof of Proposition 4.6; v4: various improvements to presentation and structure -- numbering of statements has changed