On a conjecture of Clemens on rational curves on hypersurfaces (Q678654): Difference between revisions

In Ann. Sci. Éc. Norm. Supér., IV. Sér. 19, 629-636 (1986; Zbl 0611.14024)], \textit{H. Clemens} conjectured that a general hypersurface \(X\) in \({\mathbb{P}}^n\), \(n\geq 4\), of degree \(d\geq 2n-2\) contains no rational curve, and he proved the result for \(d\geq 2n-1\). In this paper the author proves the following result, which implies Clemens' conjecture: Let \(X \subset {\mathbb{P}}^n\) be a general hypersurface of degree \(d\geq 2n-l-1,\) with \(1\leq l\leq n-3\); then any subvariety \(Y\) of \(X\) of dimension \(l\) has a desingularization \(\tilde{Y}\) with an effective canonical bundle; if the inequality is strict, the sections of \(K_{\tilde{Y}}\) separate generic points of \(Y\) (of course, for \(l=1\), \(Y\) cannot be rational since in that case \(K_{\tilde{Y}} \cong {\mathcal O}_{\tilde{Y}}(-2)\) which is not effective). Notice that hypersurfaces of degree \(\leq 2n-3\) do contain lines, so in this sense this result is optimal. The paper is based on techniques developed by \textit{H. Clemens} and \textit{L. Ein}, based on the study of the bundle \(T{\mathcal X}(1)_{\mid X}\), where \({\mathcal X}\) is the universal family of hypersurfaces in \({\mathbb{P}}^n \times H^0({\mathcal O}_{{\mathbb{P}}^n}(d))^0\) , where the last factor is the open set of smooth hypersurfaces. The author can improve the previous results since she manages to study sections of \(\bigwedge ^2 T{\mathcal X}(1)_{\mid X}\) instead of those of \(\bigwedge ^2 T{\mathcal X}(2)_{\mid X}\), as it was done before.