The size of the primes obstructing the existence of rational points

Abstract

The sequence of the primes $p$ for which a variety over $\mathbb{Q}$ has no $p$-adic point plays a fundamental role in arithmetic geometry. This sequence is deterministic, however, we prove that if we choose a typical variety from a family then the sequence has random behavior. We furthermore prove that this behavior is modelled by a random walk in Brownian motion. This has several consequences, one of them being the description of the finer properties of the distribution of the primes in this sequence via the Feynman-Kac formula.