Quartic del Pezzo surfaces without quadratic points

Abstract

Previous work of the authors showed that every quartic del Pezzo surface over a number field has index dividing $2$ (i.e., has a closed point of degree $2$ modulo $4$),, and asked whether such surfaces always have a closed point of degree $2$. We resolve this by constructing infinitely many quartic del Pezzo surfaces over $\mathbb{Q}$ without degree $2$ points. These are the first examples of smooth intersections of two quadrics with index strictly less than the minimal degree of a closed point.