Related papers: Balanced rational curves and minimal rational conn…

We study rational curves on general Fano hypersurfaces in projective space, mostly by degenerating the hypersurface along with its ambient projective space to reducible varieties. We prove results on existence of low-degree rational curves…

Let $X$ be a projective variety and let $C$ be a rational normal curve on $X$. We compute the normal bundle of $C$ in a general complete intersection of hypersurfaces of sufficiently large degree in $X$. As a result, we establish the…

Let $X \subset \mathbb{P}^n$ be a general Fano complete intersection of type $(d_1,\dots, d_k)$. If at least one $d_i$ is greater than $2$, we show that $X$ contains rational curves of degree $e \leq n$ with balanced normal bundle. If all…

The purpose of this note is to show that the minimal $e$ for which every smooth Fano hypersurface of dimension $n$ contains a free rational curve of degree at most $e$ cannot be bounded by a linear function in $n$ when the base field has…

We determine all triples $(e,d,n)$ for which a general degree $d$ hypersurface $X\subset \mathbb{P}^n$ contains a degree $e$ rational curve $C$ with balanced restricted tangent bundle $T_X|_C$. In addition, we show how to compute explicit…

On a general hypersurface of degree $d\leq n$ in $\mathbb P^n$ or $\mathbb P^n$ itself, we prove the existence of curves of any genus and high enough degree depending on the genus passing through the expected number $t$ of general points or…

We investigate the spaces of rational curves on a general hypersurface. In particular, we show that for a general degree $d$ hypersurface in $\mathbb{P}^n$ with $n \geq d+2$, the space $\overline{\mathcal{M}_{0,0}}(X,e)$ of degree $e$…

We show that complex Fano hypersurfaces can have arbitrarily large degrees of irrationality. More precisely, if we fix a Fano index e, then the degree of irrationality of a very general complex Fano hypersurface of index e and dimension n…

Chains of minimal degree rational curves have been used as an important tool in the study of Fano manifolds. Their own geometric properties, however, have not been studied much. The goal of the paper is to introduce an infinitesimal method…

This article proves hypersurfaces of degree d in projective n-space are "rationally simply-connected" if $d^2 \leq n$. In a forthcoming paper, de Jong and I prove a slightly weaker result when $d^2 \leq n+1$.

We show the Kontsevich space of rational curves of degree at most roughly $\frac{2-\sqrt{2}}{2}n$ on a general hypersurface $X\subset \mathbb{P}^n$ of degree $n-1$ is equidimensional of expected dimension and has two components: one…

This is a continuation of "Rational curves on hypersurfaces of low degree", math.AG/0203088. We prove that if d^2+d+1 < n and d > 2, then for a general hypersurface X_d in P^n of degree d, for each degree e the space of rational curves of…

Let X be a projective variety which is covered by rational curves, for instance a Fano manifold over the complex numbers. In this setup, characterization and classification problems lead to the natural question: "Given two points on X, how…

For every $n\geq 3, g\geq 1$ and all large enough $e$ depending on $n,g$, there exist curves of genus $g$, degree $e$ in a general hypersurface of degree $n$ in $\mathbb P^n$, or in $\mathbb P^n$ itself, whose whose normal bundle $N$ is…

We study various measures of irrationality for hypersurfaces of large degree in projective space and other varieties. These include the least degree of a rational covering of projective space, and the minimal gonality of a covering family…

We establish the sharp estimate <<_d N^{2/d} for the number of rational points of height at most N on an irreducible projective curve of degree d. We deduce this from a result for general hypersurfaces that is sensitive to the coefficients…

We classify real families of minimal degree rational curves that cover an embedded rational surface. A corollary is that if the projective closure of a smooth surface is not biregular isomorphic to the projective closure of the unit-sphere,…

We give the first evidence for a conjecture that a general, index-one, Fano hypersurface is not unirational: (i) a general point of the hypersurface is contained in no rational surface ruled, roughly, by low-degree rational curves, and (ii)…

A very general hypersurface of dimension $n$ and degree $d$ in complex projective space is rational if $d \leq 2$, but is expected to be irrational for all $n, d \geq 3$. Hypersurfaces in weighted projective space with degree small relative…

In this article, we establish an analogue of the dimension growth conjecture, which is regarding the density of rational points on projective varieties, for compact submanifolds of $\mathbb{R}^n$ with non-vanishing curvature. We also…