Integral Brauer--Manin Obstruction for Fermat Near Misses

Abstract

We study the integral Hasse principle for the affine surfaces given by $x^4+y^4-w^2=m^2$, where $m>1$ is odd and squarefree. We give a criterion to determine if there is an integral Brauer--Manin obstruction, which depends only on simple congruence conditions on the prime factors of $m$ modulo $8$. We use this to show that for $100\%$ of such surfaces there is no integral Brauer--Manin obstruction to the Hasse principle for integral points.

arXiv comment15 pages, comments welcome!