Birational boundedness of rationally connected Calabi-Yau 3-folds (Q2219335)

The paper deals with boundedness questions for certain rationally connected varieties. Interest for such questions has a long history, as well as remarkable recent progress with the proof of the ``BAB'' conjecture by [\textit{C. Birkar}, Ann. Math. (2) 193, No. 2, 347--405 (2021; Zbl 1469.14085)], stating that for any natural number \(d\) and any positive real number \(\varepsilon\), the family of projective varieties \(X\) such that \begin{itemize} \item \((X,\Delta)\) is \(\varepsilon\)-lc of dimension \(d\) for some boundary \(\Delta\), and \item \(K_X+\Delta\sim_{\mathbb R} 0\) and \(\Delta\) is big \end{itemize} is bounded. A conjectural generalization of the above result has been proposed by [\textit{J. McKernan} and \textit{Y. Prokhorov}, Manuscr. Math. 114, No. 3, 281--304 (2004; Zbl 1060.14022)], replacing the bigness assumption on \(\Delta\) by the rational connectedness of \(X\). In Theorem~1.5, the authors prove the \textit{birational boundedness} version of the above conjecture under the assumption that \(X\) has dimension \(3\). In particular, thanks to the ACC for lc Calabi-Yau pairs [\textit{C. D. Hacon} et al., Ann. Math. (2) 180, No. 2, 523--571 (2014; Zbl 1320.14023)], this shows that rationally connected klt Calabi-Yau threefolds form a birationally bounded family. Of course such varieties are necessarily singular; with worse than canonical singularities. The proof of Theorem~1.5 consists in first finding a Mori fibration \(X\to Z\) (possibly after replacing \(X\) with a birational model) with \(-K_X\) not big. This rests on the previously established \(3\)-dimensional version of BAB. The core of the proof is then to carefully analyze the structure of the fibration in order to find an explicit linear system with uniformly bounded volume, inducing a birational embedding of \(X\). The other main result of the paper is Theorem~1.6, which states that for any positive real numbers \(\varepsilon, \delta\), the set of pairs \((X,\Delta)\) such that \begin{itemize} \item \((X,\Delta)\) is \(\varepsilon\)-lc of dimension \(3\), \item \(X\) is rationally connected, and \item \(K_X+\Delta\sim_{\mathbb R} 0\) and the coefficients of \(\Delta\) are at least \(\delta\) \end{itemize} form a log bounded family in codimension one. As an application, the authors obtain the boundedness of rationally connected Calabi-Yau \(3\)-folds whose minimal log discrepancy satisfies \(\mathrm{mld}(X)\in (0,1)\).