Counting points of fixed degree and given height over function fields

Jeffrey Lin Thunder, Martin Widmer

Published 2011-06-03Version 1

Let $k$ be a finite field extension of the function field $\bfF_p(T)$ and $\bar{k}$ its algebraic closure. We count points in projective space $\Bbb P ^{n-1}(\bar{k})$ with given height and of fixed degree $d$ over the field $k$. If $n>2d+3$ we derive an asymptotic estimate for their number as the height tends to infinity. As an application we also deduce asymptotic estimates for certain decomposable forms.