On Manin's conjecture for quartic del Pezzo fibrations

Abstract

We generalize the homological sieve method, developed by Das, Lehmann, Tosteson, and the author, to study certain quartic del Pezzo fibrations, and we prove a version of Manin's conjecture over global function fields in these cases. Our proofs combine the $3$-dimensional positive-characteristic minimal model program, the geometry of the space of sections and the Abel--Jacobi mapping, and the homological sieve method. Our quartic del Pezzo surfaces have Picard rank $2$, and admit two birational morphisms to non-split quadric surfaces. In particular, they do not possess any conic fibrations.