with an appendix by Jean-Louis Colliot-Thélène

Torsion order of smooth projective surfaces

To a smooth projective variety $X$ whose Chow group of $0$-cycles is $\mathbf Q$-universally trivial one can associate its torsion index $\mathrm{Tor}(X)$, the smallest multiple of the diagonal appearing in a cycle-theoretic decomposition à la Bloch-Srinivas. We show that $\mathrm{Tor}(X)$ is the exponent of the torsion in the Néron-Severi-group of $X$ when $X$ is a surface over an algebraically closed field $k$, up to a power of the exponential characteristic of $k$.