Brauer equivalent number fields and the geometry of quaternionic Shimura varieties

Two number fields are said to be Brauer equivalent if there is an isomorphism between their Brauer groups that commutes with restriction. In this paper we prove a variety of number theoretic results about Brauer equivalent number fields (e.g., they must have the same signature). These results are then applied to the geometry of certain arithmetic locally symmetric spaces. As an example, we construct incommensurable arithmetic locally symmetric spaces containing exactly the same set of proper immersed totally geodesic surfaces.