Geometric families of constant reductions and the Skolem property

Abstract:

Let $F|K$ be a function field in one variable and $\mathcal V$ be a family of independent valuations of the constant field $K.$ Given $v\in \mathcal V ,$ a valuation prolongation $\mathrm v$ to $F$ is called a constant reduction if the residue fields $F\mathrm v |Kv$ again form a function field of one variable. Suppose $t\in F$ is a non-constant function, and for each $v\in \mathcal V$ let $V_{t}$ be the set of all prolongations of the Gauß valuation $v_{t}$ on $K(t)$ to $F.$ The union of the sets $V_{t}$ over all $v\in \mathcal V$ is denoted by $\mathbfit {V}_{t}.$ The aim of this paper is to study families of constant reductions $\mathbfit {V}$ of $F$ prolonging the valuations of $\mathcal V$ and the criterion for them to be principal, that is to be sets of the type $\mathbfit {V}_{t}.$ The main result we prove is that if either $\mathcal V$ is finite and each $v\in \mathcal V$ has rational rank one and residue field algebraic over a finite field, or if $\mathcal V$ is any set of non-archimedean valuations of a global field $K$ satisfying the strong approximation property, then each geometric family of constant reductions $\mathbfit {V}$ prolonging $\mathcal V$ is principal. We also relate this result to the Skolem property for the existence of $\mathcal V$-integral points on varieties over $K,$ and Rumely’s existence theorem. As an application we give a birational characterization of arithmetic surfaces $\mathcal X /S$ in terms of the generic points of the closed fibre. The characterization we give implies the existence of finite morphisms to $\mathbb P ^{1}_{S}.$