Arithmetic Quotients of the Complex Ball and a Conjecture of Lang

We prove that various arithmetic quotients of the unit ball in $\mathbb{C}^n$ are Mordellic, in the sense that they have only finitely many rational points over any finitely generated field extension of $\mathbb{Q}$. In the previously known case of compact hyperbolic complex surfaces, we give a new proof using their Albanese in conjunction with some key results of Faltings, but without appealing to the Shafarevich conjecture. In higher dimension, our methods allow us to solve an alternative of Ullmo and Yafaev. Our strongest result uses in addition Rogawski's theory and establishes the Mordellicity of the Baily-Borel compactifications of Picard modular surfaces of some precise levels related to the discriminant of the imaginary quadratic fields.Comment: 21 pages, final versio

On the Hilbert Property and the Fundamental Group of Algebraic Varieties

We review, under a perspective which appears different from previous ones, the so-called Hilbert Property (HP) for an algebraic variety (over a number field); this is linked to Hilbert's Irreducibility Theorem and has important implications, for instance towards the Inverse Galois Problem. We shall observe that the HP is in a sense `opposite' to the Chevalley-Weil Theorem, which concerns unramified covers; this link shall immediately entail the result that the HP can possibly hold only for simply connected varieties (in the appropriate sense). In turn, this leads to new counterexamples to the HP, involving Enriques surfaces. We also prove the HP for a K3 surface related to the above Enriques surface, providing what appears to be the first example of a non-rational variety for which the HP can be proved. We also formulate some general conjectures relating the HP with the topology of algebraic varieties.Comment: 24 page