Related papers: Unbendable rational curves of Goursat type and Car…

A nonsingular rational curve $C$ in a complex manifold $X$ whose normal bundle is isomorphic to $${\mathcal O}_{{\mathbb P}^1}(1)^{\oplus p} \oplus {\mathcal O}_{{\mathbb P}^1}^{\oplus q}$$ for some nonnegative integers $p$ and $q$ is…

1-flat irreducible G-structures, equivalently, irreducible G-structures admitting torsion-free affine connections, have been studied extensively in differential geometry, especially in connection with the theory of affine holonomy groups.…

This survey paper discusses some of the recent progress in the study of rational curves on algebraic varieties. It was written for the survey volume of the priority programme "Global Methods in Complex Geometry", supported by the DFG. To…

We propose a conjecture that a general member of a bracket-generating family of rational curves in a complex manifold satisfies the formal principle with convergence, namely, any formal equivalence between such curves is convergent. If the…

This is a survey of recent works on the germ-equivalence problem of minimal rational curves on uniruled projective manifolds. Our main interest is when the associated varieties of minimal rational tangents form an isotrivial family of…

We study families of rational curves on an algebraic variety satisfying incidence conditions. We prove an analogue of bend-and-break: that is, we show that under suitable conditions, such a family must contain reducibles. In the case of…

We introduce arrangements of rational sections over curves. They generalize line arrangements on P^2. Each arrangement of d sections defines a single curve in P^{d-2} through the Kapranov's construction of \bar{M}_{0,d+1}. We show a…

We consider the locus of irreducible nonsingular rational curves of degree d Pn, n>2, meeting a generic collection of linear subspaces. When this locus is 0 (resp 1)- dimensional, we compute (recursively) its degree (resp. geometric genus).…

Let $X$ be either a general hypersurface of degree $n+1$ in $\mathbb P^n$ or a general $(2,n)$ complete intersection in $\mathbb P^{n+1}, n\geq 4$. We construct balanced rational curves on $X$ of all high enough degrees. If $n=3$ or $g=1$,…

A Goursat structure on a manifold of dimension n is a rank two distribution D such that dim D(i)=i+2, for i=0,...,n-2, where D(i) denotes the derived flag of D, which is defined by D(0)=D and D(i+1)=D(i)+[D(i),D(i)]. Goursat structures…

In this paper we address Fano manifolds X with a locally unsplit dominating family of rational curves of anticanonical degree equal to the dimension of X. We first observe that their Picard number is at most 3, and then we provide a…

We study families of n-gonal curves with maximal variation of moduli, which have a rational section. Certain numerical results on the degree of the modular map are obtained for such families of hyperelliptic and trigonal curves. In the last…

We formulate the equivalence problem, in the sense of E. Cartan, for families of minimal rational curves on uniruled projective manifolds. An important invariant of this equivalence problem is the variety of minimal rational tangents. We…

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…

We define a suitably tame class of singular symplectic curves in 4-manifolds, namely those whose singularities are modeled on complex curve singularities. We study the corresponding symplectic isotopy problem, with a focus on rational…

Let $C$ be an irreducible projective plane curve in the complex projective space ${\mathbb{P}}^2$. The classification of such curves, up to the action of the automorphism group $PGL(3,{\mathbb{C}})$ on ${\mathbb{P}}^2$, is a very difficult…

In characteristic $p>0$ and for $q$ a power of $p$, we compute the number of nonplanar rational curves of arbitrary degrees on a smooth Hermitian surface of degree $q+1$ under the assumption that the curves have a parametrization given by…

It is a well-known fact that families of minimal rational curves on rational homogeneous manifolds of Picard number one are uniform, in the sense that the tangent bundle to the manifold has the same splitting type on each curve of the…

This paper deals with rational curves and birational contractions on irreducible holomorphically symplectic manifold. We survey some recent results about minimal rational curves, their deformations, extremal rays associated with these…

This note is an appendix to 'Measures of irrationality for hypersurfaces of large degree' by L. Ein, R. Lazarsfeld and B. Ullery. We prove an existence result for families of curves having low gonality, and lying on fundamental loci of…