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Mikhail Bondarko
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Firstly I would like to note that there seems to be two reasonable versions of your question:

  1. For which $X$ is $\#X(\mathbb{F}_p)$ is divisible by $p$ for any prime $p$?

  2. For which $X$ is $\#X(\mathbb{F}_p)$ is divisible by $p$ for any sufficiently large prime $p$?

Both of these questions are quite interesting; yet the first one is more "arithmetic" and so harder to answer. Possibly I will treat it in a paper some day (thank you for asking it!).:) So, in this answer I will mostly treat the second question (which is also very hard).

Both of the questions are "motivic" since they depend on certain (complicated sort of) 'etale cohomology of $X$ only. Besides, they only depend on the class of the motif of $X$ (with compact support) with rational coefficients in the corresponding Grothendiek group of motives (that is also a ring). To get a sufficient condition for the first question one may consider the class of $X$ in a certain "complicate Grothendieck" group over the integers. For the second question it suffices to consider the motif with compact support of $X$ over $\mathbb{Q}$. This motif (and so, $X$ itself) has a well-defined class in the Grothendiek group of Chow motives (this is a seminal result of Gillet and Soule that answers a question of Serre; you may also have a look at my results on weight complexes and $K_0$(motives)). Thus $X$ also has a well-defined class in $K_0(Mot_{num})$. $X$ satisfies the conditions of Question 2 whenever this class is congruent to the one of a point modulo the Lefschetz motif (i.e., if $[X]-[pt]$ is the twist of an effective class).

At this stage one can ask two more natural questions:

  1. It this $K_0$-condition a necessary one?

  2. What geometric information does this condition contain?

I suspect that one can deduce the positive answer to Question 3 from certain "standard motivic" conjectures; yet this doesn't seem to be easy (and involves interaction between motives over fields of distinct characteristics; so one probably needs certain "relative motives" to achieve this).

Lastly, I would say that I do not expect any nice answers to Question 4. Certainly, the motivic conjectures predict that one can lift from $K_0(Mot_{num})$ to $K_0(Chow)$. Yet I see no way to rise from $K_0$ to motives themselves. Yet possibly I miss something here; then you may be interested in my results on Chow-weight homology: https://www.google.ru/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CB0QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Farxiv.org%2Fabs%2F1411.6354&ei=dxWNVZbXO8XgyQOR8YCQCQ&usg=AFQjCNGZOey1IoXyWM5On9S2AUDnUTTmFA&sig2=nRumNYSvux2R2QblD1jcqQ&bvm=bv.96782255,d.bGQ&cad=rjt Anyway, the motivic assertions that one can obtain this way do not seems to imply anything like rational connectedness of varieties.

Mikhail Bondarko
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