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 to study chains of minimal rational curves via varieties of minimal rational tangents and their higher secants. For many examples of Fano manifolds this method can be used to compute the minimal length of chains needed to join two general points. One consequence of our computation is a bound on the multiplicities of divisors at a general point of the moduli of stable bundles of rank two on a curve.
In this work, we show that for a certain class of threefolds in positive characteristics, rational-chain-connectivity is equivalent to supersingularity. The same result is known for K3 surfaces with elliptic fibrations. And there are examples of threefolds that are both supersingular and rationally chain connected.
We shall show that the variety of minimal rational tangents on a complete toric manifold X is linear and minimal components in RatCurves^n(X) corresponds bijectively to some special primitive collections in the fan defining X.
We determine all of lines in the moduli space $M$ of stable bundles for arbitrary rank and degree. A further application of minimal rational curves is also given in last section.
Let $C$ be a chain-like curve over $\mathbb{C}$. In this paper, we investigate the rationality of moduli spaces of $w$-semistable vector bundles on $C$ of arbitrary rank and fixed determinant by putting some restrictions on the Euler characteristics.
We investigate families of minimal rational curves on Schubert varieties, their Bott-Samelson desingularizations, and their generalizations constructed by Nicolas Perrin in the minuscule case. In particular, we describe the minimal families on small resolutions of minuscule Schubert varieties.
In this paper, we investigate the minimal length of chains of minimal rational curves needed to join two general points on a Fano manifold of Picard number 1. In particular, we give a sharp bound of the length by a fundamental argument. As an application, we compute the length for Fano manifolds of dimension < 8.
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 family. In this note we prove that certain --stronger-- uniformity conditions on a family of minimal rational curves on a Fano manifold of Picard number one allow to prove that the manifold is homogeneous.
In this paper, we investigate higher order minimal families $H_i$ of rational curves associated to Fano manifolds $X$. We prove that $H_i$ is also a Fano manifold if the Chern characters of $X$ satisfy some positivity conditions. We also provide a sufficient condition for Fano manifolds to be covered by higher rational manifolds.
On rational chain connectedness of globally +-regular varieties
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)（洛桑联邦理工学院）；University of Illinois at Chicago（伊利诺伊大学芝加哥分校）；Michigan State University（密歇根州立大学）；Peking University（北京大学）
Using the structure of the jet schemes of rational double point singularities, we construct "minimal embedded toric resolutions" of these singularities. We also establish, for these singularities, a correspondence between a natural class of irreducible components of the jet schemes centered at the singular locus and the set of divisors which appear on every "minimal embedded toric resolution". We prove that this correspondence is bijective except for the $E_8$ singulartiy. This can be thought as an embedded Nash correspondence for rational double point singularities.
On a general Fano hypersurface in projective space, we determine for infinitely many $k$ the minimal degree $e$ of a rational curve through a general collection of $k$ points. In the case of a hypersurface of index 1, our results hold for all $k\geq 1$. In an appendix, M.C. Chang proves an arithmetical result which implies that in the case of index $>1$, the density of the set of curve degrees $e$ covered by our method is approximately $\frac{(n-d)(d-\frac{5}{2})}{(n-2)d}$.
The classification of minimal rational surfaces and the birational links between them by Iskovskikh, Manin and others is a well-known subject in the theory of algebraic surfaces. We explain algorithms that realise links of type II between minimal del Pezzo surfaces, one of the major classes of birational links, and we describe briefly how this fits into a large project to implement the results of Iskovskikh's programme in Magma.
Let M be the moduli space of stable bundles of rank 2 and with fixed determinant \mathcal{L} of degree d on a smooth projective curve C of genus g>= 2. When g=3 and d is even, we prove, for any point [W]\in M, there is a minimal rational curve passing through [W], which is not a Hecke curve. This complements a theorem of Xiaotao Sun.
Consider a simple algebraic group G of adjoint type, and its wonderful compactification X. We show that X admits a unique family of minimal rational curves, and we explicitly describe the subfamily consisting of curves through a general point. As an application, we show that X has the target rigidity property when G is not of type A_1 or C.
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 many minimal degree rational curve are there which contain those points?". A recent answer to this question led to a number of new results in classification theory. As an infinitesimal analogue, we ask "How many minimal degree rational curves exist which contain a prescribed tangent vector?" In this paper, we give sufficient conditions which guarantee that e…
In this paper we investigate complex uniruled varieties $X$ whose rational curves of minimal degree satisfy a special property. Namely, we assume that the tangent directions to such curves at a general point $x\in X$ form a linear subspace of $T_xX$. As an application of our main result, we give a unified geometric proof of Mori's, Wahl's, Campana-Peternell's and Andreatta-Wiśniewski's characterizations of ${\mathbb P}^n$.
We construct $13$ projective $\mathbb{Q}$-factorial Fano toric varieties and show that for any minimal rational elliptic surface $X$ there is one such toric variety $Z_X$ and a divisor class $δ_X\in {\rm Cl}(Z_X)$ such that the number of $(-1)$-curves of $X$ equals the dimension of the Riemann-Roch space of $δ_X$. As an application we give the number of $(-1)$-curves of any such elliptic fibration of Halphen index $2$.
In this paper, we consider a natural question how many minimal rational curves are needed to join two general points on a Fano manifold X of Picard number 1. In particular, we study the minimal length of such chains in the cases where the dimension of X is at most 5, the coindex of X is at most 3 and X equips with a structure of a double cover. As an application, we give a better bound on the degree of Fano 5-folds of Picard number 1.
In this short note, we show that any rational curve passing through the generic point in a moduli space of stable bundles with rank $r$ and fixed determinant on a smooth projective curve of genus $g\ge 4$ has degree (with respect to the anti-canonical line bundle of the moduli space) at least $2r$. It has degree $2r$ if and only if it is a Hecke curve.
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 study the case when varieties of minimal rational tangents at general points form an isotrivial family. The main question in this case is for which projective variety $Z$, a family of minimal rational curves with $Z$-isotrivial varieties of minimal rational tangents is locally equivalent to the flat model. We show that this is the case when $Z$ satisfies certa…
In this paper we investigate Fano manifolds $X$ whose Chern characters $ch_k(X)$ satisfy some positivity conditions. Our approach is via the study of polarized minimal families of rational curves $(H_x,L_x)$ through a general point $x\in X$. First we translate positivity properties of the Chern characters of $X$ into properties of the pair $(H_x,L_x)$. This allows us to classify polarized minimal families of rational curves associated to Fano manifolds $X$ satisfying $ch_2(X)\geq0$ and $ch_3(X)\geq0$. As a first application, we provide sufficient conditions for these manifolds to be covered by…
Let $C$ be an algebraic curve of genus $g$ and $L$ a line bundle over $C$. Let $\mathcal{MS}_C(n,L)$ and $\mathcal{MO}_C(n,L)$ be the moduli spaces of $L$-valued symplectic and orthogonal bundles respectively, over $C$ of rank $n$. We construct rational curves on these moduli spaces which generalize Hecke curves on the moduli space of vector bundles. As a main result, we show that these Hecke type curves have the minimal degree among the rational curves passing through a general point of the moduli spaces. As its byproducts, we show the non-abelian Torelli theorem and compute the automorphism …
We prove that the class of log canonical rational singularities is closed under the basic operations of the minimal model program. We also give some supplementary results on the minimal model program for log canonical surfaces.
For any regular noetherian scheme X and every k>0, we define a chain morphism between two chain complexes whose homology with rational coefficients is isomorphic to the algebraic K-groups of X tensored by the field of rational numbers. It is shown that these morphisms induce in homology the Adams operations defined by Gillet and Soule or the ones defined by Grayson.
Let $ϕ: X \to \mathbb P^n$ be a double cover branched along a smooth hypersurface of degree $2m, 2 \leq m \leq n-1$. We study the varieties of minimal rational tangents $\mathcal C_x \subset \mathbb P T_x(X)$ at a general point $x$ of $X$. We describe the homogeneous ideal of $\mathcal C_x$ and show that the projective isomorphism type of $\mathcal C_x$ varies in a maximal way as $x$ varies over general points of $X$. Our description of the ideal of $\mathbb C_x$ implies a certain rigidity property of the covering morphism $ϕ$. As an application of this rigidity, we show that any finite morphi…
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 start, we discuss existence results for rational curves on foliated manifolds. We construct the tangent morphism, define the variety of minimal rational tangents (VMRT) and name a number of results that show that many of the geometry properies of a uniruled variety are encoded in the projective geometry of the VMRT. The results are then applied in two differen…
We give an introduction to the theory of varieties of minimal rational tangents, emphasizing its aspect as a fusion of algebraic geometry and differential geometry, more specifically, a fusion of Mori geometry of minimal rational curves and Cartan geometry of cone structures.
We introduce the notion of exact tilting objects, which are partial tilting objects $T$ inducing an equivalence between the abelian category generated by $T$ and the category of modules over the endomorphism algebra of $T$. Given a chain of sufficiently negative rational curves on a rational surface, we construct an exceptional sequence whose universal extension is an exact tilting object. For a chain of (-2)-curves, we obtain an equivalence with modules over a well known algebra.
Given a relatively minimal fibration $f: S \to \Bbb P^1$ on a rational surface $S$ with general fiber $C$ of genus $g$, we investigate under what conditions the inequality $6(g-1)\le K_f^2$ occurs, where $K_f$ is the canonical relative sheaf of $f$. We give sufficient conditions for having such inequality, depending on the genus and gonality of $C$ and the number of certain exceptional curves on $S$. We illustrate how these results can be used for constructing fibrations with the desired property. For fibrations of genus $11\le g\le 49$ we prove the inequality: $$ 6(g-1) +4 -4\sqrt g \le K_f^2…
We show that deformations of a surjective morphism onto a Fano manifold of Picard number 1 are unobstructed and rigid modulo the automorphisms of the target, if the variety of minimal rational tangents of the Fano manifold is non-linear or finite. The condition on the variety of minimal rational tangents holds for practically all known examples of Fano manifolds of Picard number 1, except the projective space. When the variety of minimal rational tangents is non-linear, the proof is based on an earlier result of N. Mok and the author on the birationality of the tangent map. When the varieties …
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, then the set of minimal degree rational curves that cover the surface is either empty or of dimension at most two. Moreover, if these curves are of minimal degree over the real numbers, but not over the complex numbers, then almost all the curves are smooth. Our methods lead to an algorithm that takes as input a real surface parametrization and outputs all …
We study minimal rational curves on a complex manifold that are tangent to a distribution. In this setting, the variety of minimal rational tangents (VMRT) has to be isotropic with respect to the Levi tensor of the distribution. Our main result is a converse of this: any smooth projective variety isotropic with respect to a vector-valued anti-symmetric form can be realized as VMRT of minimal rational curves tangent to a distribution on a complex manifold. The complex manifold is constructed as a partial equivariant compactification of a metabelian group, which is a result of independent intere…
In this paper we consider the birational classification of pairs (S,L), with S a rational surfaces and L a linear system on S. We give a classification theorem for such pairs and we determine, for each irreducible plane curve B, its "Cremona minimal" models, i.e. those plane curves which are equivalent to B via a Cremona transformation, and have minimal degree under this condition.
We show that a standard conic bundle over a minimal rational surface is rational and its Jacobian splits as the direct sum of Jacobians of curves if and only if its derived category admits a semiorthogonal decomposition by exceptional objects and the derived categories of those curves. Moreover, such a decomposition gives the splitting of the intermediate Jacobian also when the surface is not minimal.
For a uniruled projective manifold, we prove that a general rational curve of minimal degree through a general point is uniquely determined by its tangent vector. As applications, among other things we give a new proof, using no Lie theory, of our earlier result that a holomorphic map from a rational homogeneous space of Picard number 1 onto a projective manifold different from the projective space must be a biholomorphic map.
The family of varieties of minimal rational tangents on a quasi-homogeneous projective manifold is isotrivial. Conversely, are projective manifolds with isotrivial varieties of minimal rational tangents quasi-homogenous? We will show that this is not true in general, even when the projective manifold has Picard number 1. In fact, an isotrivial family of varieties of minimal rational tangents needs not be locally flat in differential geometric sense. This leads to the question for which projective variety Z, the Z-isotriviality of varieties of minimal rational tangents implies local flatness. O…
We provide a new construction of rationality for cubic fourfolds via Mori's theory and the minimal model program. As an application, we present the solution of the Kuznetsov's conjecture for $d=42$ (the first open case). Our methods also show an explicit connection between the rationality of cubic fourfolds belonging to the first four admissible families $\mathcal C_d$, with $d=14,26,38$, and $42$ and some birational models of minimal K3 surfaces of degree $d$ contained in well known rational Fano fourfolds.
The purpose of this article is to study the deformations of smooth surfaces $X$ of general type whose canonical map is a finite, degree 2 morphism onto a minimal rational surface or onto $\mathbf F_1$, embedded in projective space by a very ample complete linear series. Among other things, we prove that any deformation of the canonical morphism of such surfaces $X$ is again a morphism of degree 2. A priori, this is not at all obvious, for the invariants $(p_g(X),c_1^2(X))$ of most of these surfaces lie on or above the Castelnuovo line; thus, in principle, a deformation of such $X$ could have a…
The minimum of intersection numbers of the anti-canonical divisor with rational curves on a Fano manifold is called pseudo-index. It is expected that the intersection number of anti-canonical divisor attains to the minimum on an extremal ray, i.e. there exists an extremal rational curve whose intersection number with the anti-canonical divisor equals the pseudo-index. In this note, we prove this for smooth Fano 4-folds having birational contractions.
We construct infinitesimal deformations on an open domain of a smooth projective surface given by a complement of plumbings of disjoint linear chains of smooth rational curves. We show that the infinitesimal deformations are not small deformations, that is, they change the complex structure away from the boundary of the domain.
For a birational log Fano contraction, it is conjectured an inequality between the dimension of its exceptional locus and the minimal log discrepancy over the locus. The conjecture follows from the existence of the flip for the contraction and another conjecture about the maximum of minimal log discripancy in given dimension; in particular, it holds in small dimensions (up to 4), and some special cases. It is illustrated by some examples.
Let $C$ be a hyperelliptic curve of genus $g$ over the fraction field $K$ of a discrete valuation ring $R$. Assume that the residue field $k$ of $R$ is perfect and that $\mathop{\textrm{char}} k \neq 2$. Assume that the Weierstrass points of $C$ are $K$-rational. Let $S = \mathop{\textrm{Spec}} R$. Let $\mathcal{X}$ be the minimal proper regular model of $C$ over $S$. Let $\mathop{\textrm{Art}} (\mathcal{X}/S)$ denote the Artin conductor of the $S$-scheme $\mathcal{X}$ and let $ν(Δ)$ denote the minimal discriminant of $C$. We prove that $-\mathop{\textrm{Art}} (\mathcal{X}/S) \leq ν(Δ)$. As a …
First we solve the problem of finding minimal degree families on toric surfaces by reducing it to lattice geometry. Then we describe how to find minimal degree families on, more generally, rational complex projective surfaces.
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. We propose to study them in a setting in algebraic geometry, where they arise from varieties of minimal rational tangents (VMRT) associated to families of minimal rational curves on uniruled projective manifolds. We prove that such a structure is locally symmetric when the dimension of the uniruled projective manifold is at least 5. By the classification resu…
We give bounds on the degree of generation and relations of section rings associated to arbitrary $\mathbb{Q}$-divisors on projective spaces of all dimensions and Hirzebruch surfaces. For section rings of effective $\mathbb{Q}$-divisors on projective spaces, we find the best possible bound on the degrees of generators and relations.
Let (C,0) be a reduced curve germ in a normal surface singularity (X,0). The main goal is to recover the delta invariant of the abstract curve (C,0) from the topology of the embedding. We give explicit formulae whenever (C,0) is minimal generic and (X,0) is rational (as a continuation of previous works of the authors). Additionally we prove that if (X,0) is a quotient singularity, then the delta invariant of (C,0) only admits the values r-1 or r, where r is the number or irreducible components of (C,0). (r-1 realizes the extremal lower bound, valid only for `ordinary r-tuples'.)
Complex contact manifolds arise naturally in differential geometry, algebraic geometry and exterior differential systems. Their classification would answer an important question about holonomy groups. The geometry of such manifold $X$ is governed by the contact lines contained in $X$. These are related to the notion of a variety of minimal rational tangents. In this review we discuss the partial classification theorems of projective complex contact manifolds. Among such manifolds one finds contact Fano manifolds (which include adjoint varieties) and projectivised cotangent bundles. In the firs…
In many cases rational surfaces obtained by desingularization of birational dynamical systems are not relatively minimal. We propose a method to obtain coordinates of relatively minimal rational surfaces by using blowing down structure. We apply this method to the study of various integrable or linearizable mappings, including discrete versions of reduced Nahm equations.
We show that if the variety of minimal rational tangents (VMRT) of a uniruled projective manifold at a general point is projectively equivalent to that of a symplectic or an odd-symplectic Grassmannian, the germ of a general minimal rational curve is biholomorphic to the germ of a general line in a presymplectic Grassmannian. As an application, we characterize symplectic and odd-symplectic Grassmannians, among Fano manifolds of Picard number 1, by their VMRT at a general point and prove their rigidity under global Kähler deformation. Analogous results for $G/P$ associated with a long root were…
Pasquier and Perrin discovered that the ${\rm G}_2$-horospherical manifold ${\bf X}$ of Picard number 1 can be realized as a smooth specialization of the rational homogeneous space parameterizing the lines on the 5-dimensional hyperquadric, in other words, it can be deformed nontrivially to the rational homogeneous space. We show that ${\bf X}$ is the only smooth projective variety with this property. This is obtained as a consequence of our main result that ${\bf X}$ can be recognized by its VMRT, namely, a Fano manifold of Picard number 1 is biregular to ${\bf X}$ if and only if its VMRT at …
