On the canonical degrees of curves in varieties of general type (Q1930895)

Conjecturally, surfaces of general type contain only finitely many rational or elliptic curves. More generally, for every \(g\) the curves of genus at most \(g\) on a variety of general type \(X\) should form a bounded family. There is also an effective version of this conjecture stating the following: Given a smooth projective variety \(X\) of general type there are constants \(A,B\) and a closed algebraic subset \(Z\subset X\) such that for every finite morphism \(f\) from a curve \(C\) to \(X\) with \(f(C)\not\subset Z\) we have \(\deg f^*K_X\leq A(2g_C-2)+B[C:f(C)]\). This conjecture is proved for compact locally symmetric spaces with \(A=\dim X\), \(B=0\) and \(Z=\{\;\}\). Using certain Shimura varieties it is also shown that the conjecture can not hold in general with \(A<\dim(X)\).