Lengths of chains of minimal rational curves on Fano manifolds (Q630847)

The study of smooth Fano varieties is closely related to that of minimal rational curves on them, see for instance [\textit{J.-M. Hwang} and \textit{S. Kebekus}, ``Geometry of chains of minimal rational curves'', J. Reine Angew. Math. 584, 173--194 (2005; Zbl 1084.14040)]. The paradigm of it is the possibility to characterize the projective space via various behaviour of lines in it. The paper under review addresses the question to bound the number of minimal rational curves needed to join two general points of a Fano manifold. The main result is particularly effective for Fano 5-folds, producing an improved bound on their degree, and applies as well to other special classes of Fano manifolds.