The pliability of del Pezzo surfaces

Abstract

We study $G$-Mori fibre space models of $G$-del Pezzo surfaces, focusing on surfaces over non-closed fields. We construct explicit examples of birationally rigid sextic del Pezzo surfaces and give a negative answer to a generalization of Kollár's question on birational rigidity and field extensions: a sextic del Pezzo surface of Picard rank $1$ can fail to be birationally rigid over its ground field but become birationally rigid after an algebraic field extension. We interpret this phenomenon in terms of the failure of injectivity of natural maps in nonabelian Galois cohomology induced by the inclusion of automorphism groups into birational automorphism groups. We also show that finite pliability is unbounded: for every integer $d\geqslant2$, we construct a sextic del Pezzo surface of index $3$ over a field of characteristic zero whose pliability is exactly $3^d+1$.