Elekes-Szab\'o for collinearity on cubic surfaces

TL;DR

This paper investigates the orchard problem on cubic surfaces, classifying those with special line configurations and establishing new algebraic results related to Elekes-Szabó conditions and fixed points of involutions.

Contribution

It classifies cubic surfaces with unbounded families of 3-rich lines not on a plane and proves a new algebraic-geometric result about fixed points of Geiser involutions.

Findings

Such families exist only on unions of three planes sharing a line.

A general result on nilpotent groups with algebraic actions satisfying Elekes-Szabó.

Fixed points of certain involutions lie in a single plane under generic conditions.

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-Szab\'o 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.