Notes sur l'application d'Albanese pour les zéro-cycles

For a smooth projective variety X over an arbitrary field k, we discuss the surjectivity of the Albanese map from the Chow group of zero-cycles of degree zero on X to the group of rational points of the Albanese variety of X. Over arithmetic fields, we use Severi-Brauer fibrations to produce examples where the map is not surjective. For varieties X over the complex field, we discuss the question after extension of the complex field to function fields of varieties. This is related to C. Voisin’s notion of universal zero-cycle and to rationality questions for rationally connected threefolds.