Lines on Cubic Hypersurfaces Over Finite Fields

Overview & Synopsis

We show that any smooth cubic hypersurface of dimension n defined over a finite field Fq contains a line defined over Fq in each of the following cases: • n = 3 and q ≥ 11; • n = 4 and q 6= 3; • n ≥ 5. For a smooth cubic threefold X, the variety of lines contained in X is a smooth projective surface F(X) for which the Tate conjecture holds, and we obtain information about the Picard number of F(X) and the 5-dimensional principally polarized Albanese variety A(F(X)