Paper detail

On the Brauer-Manin Obstruction Applied to Ramified Covers

The Brauer-Manin obstruction is used to explain the failure of the local-global principle for algebraic varieties. In 1999 Skorobogatov gave the first example of a variety that does not satisfy the local-global principle which is not explained by the Brauer-Manin obstruction. He did so by applying the Brauer-Manin obstruction to étale covers of the variety, and thus defining a finer obstruction. In 2008 Poonen gave the first example of failure of the local-global principle which cannot be explained for by Skorobogatov's étale-Brauer obstruction. However, Poonen's construction was not accompanied by a definition of a new finer obstruction. In this paper I shall present a possible definition for such an obstruction by allowing to apply the Brauer-Manin obstruction to some ramified covers as well, and show that this new obstruction can explain Poonen counterexample in the case of a totally imaginary number field.