Ch\^atelet surfaces and non-invariance of the Brauer-Manin obstruction for $3$-folds

Abstract

In this paper, we construct three kinds of Ch\^atelet surfaces, which have some given arithmetic properties with respect to field extensions of number fields. We then use these constructions to study the properties of weak approximation with Brauer-Manin obstruction and the Hasse principle with Brauer-Manin obstruction for $3$-folds, which are pencils of Ch\^atelet surfaces parameterized by a curve, with respect to field extensions of number fields. We give general constructions (conditional on a conjecture of M. Stoll) to negatively answer some questions, and illustrate these constructions and some exceptions with some explicit unconditional examples.