It is known that for a smooth hyperelliptic curve to have a large a-number, the genus must be small relative to the characteristic of the field, p > 0, over which the curve is defined. It was proven by Elkin that for a genus g hyperelliptic curve C to have aC = g − 1, the genus is bounded by g < 3p 2 . In this paper, we show that this bound can be lowered to g < p. The method of proof is to force the Cartier-Manin matrix to have rank one and examine what restrictions that places on the affine equation defining the hyperelliptic curve. We then use this bound to summarize what is known about the existence of such curves when p = 3, 5 and 7.

We consider two K3 surfaces defined over an arbitrary field, together with a smooth proper moduli space of stable sheaves on each. When the moduli spaces have the same dimension, we prove that if thé etale cohomology groups (with Q ℓ coefficients) of the two surfaces are isomorphic as Galois representations, then the same is true of the two moduli spaces. In particular, if the field of definition is finite and the K3 surfaces have equal zeta functions, then so do the moduli spaces, even when the moduli spaces are not birational.

Given a smooth projective variety over a number field and an element of its Brauer group, we consider the specialization of the Brauer class at a place of good reduction for the variety and the class. We are interested in the case of K3 surfaces. We show that a Brauer class on a very general polarized K3 surface over a number field becomes trivial after specialization at a set of places of positive natural density. We deduce that there exist cubic fourfolds over number fields that are conjecturally irrational, with rational reduction at a positive proportion of places. We also deduce that there are twisted derived equivalent K3 surfaces which become derived equivalent after reduction at a positive proportion of places.

We give the first examples of derived equivalences between varieties defined over non-closed fields where one has a rational point and the other does not. We begin with torsors over Jacobians of curves over $\mathbb {Q}$ and $\mathbb {F}_q(t)$ , and conclude with a pair of hyperkähler 4-folds over $\mathbb {Q}$ . The latter is independently interesting as a new example of a transcendental Brauer–Manin obstruction to the Hasse principle. The source code for the various computations is supplied as supplementary material with the online version of this article.

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