The Manin-Peyre conjecture for smooth spherical Fano threefolds

Abstract

The Manin-Peyre conjecture is established for smooth spherical Fano threefolds of semisimple rank one and type N. Together with the previously solved case T and the toric cases, this covers all types of smooth spherical Fano threefolds. The case N features a number of structural novelties; most notably, one may lose regularity of the ambient toric variety, the height conditions may contain fractional exponents, and it may be necessary to exclude a thin subset with exceptionally many rational points from the count, as otherwise Manin's conjecture in its original form would turn out to be incorrect.