We prove that the special-value conjecture for the zeta function of a proper, regular, flat arithmetic surface formulated in [6] at $s=1$ is equivalent to the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture for the Jacobian of the generic fibre. There are two key results in the proof. The first is the triviality of the correction factor of [6, Conjecture 5.12], which we show for arbitrary regular proper arithmetic schemes. In the proof we need to develop some results for the eh-topology on schemes over finite fields which might be of independent interest. The second result is a different proof of a formula due to Geisser, relating the cardinalities of the Brauer and the Tate–Shafarevich group, which applies to arbitrary rather than only totally imaginary base fields.

We develop a localized intersection theory for arithmetic schemes on the model of Fulton's intersection theory. We prove a Lefschetz fixed point formula for arithmetic surfaces, and give an application to a conjecture of Serre on the existence of Artin's representations for regular local rings of dimension 2 and unequal characteristic.

We define a natural discriminant for a hyperelliptic curve X of genus g over a field K as a canonical element of the (8g+4)th tensor power of the maximal exterior product of the vectorspace of global differential forms on X. If v is a discrete valuation on K and X has semistable reduction at v, we compute the order of vanishing of the discriminant at v in terms of the geometry of the reduction of X over v. As an application, we find an upper bound for the Arakelov self-intersection of the relative dualizing sheaf on a semistable hyperelliptic arithmetic surface.