Geometry of varieties of minimal rational tangents (Q2918461)

This paper is a survey of the theory of varieties of minimal rational tangents (VMRT), considered not, as in previous papers (see for instance the author's old survey [in: School on vanishing theorems and effective results in algebraic geometry. Lecture notes of the school held in Trieste, Italy, April 25--May 12, 2000. Trieste: The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics. ICTP Lect. Notes 6, 335--393 (2001; Zbl 1086.14506)]), just as a tool for the study of uniruled manifolds, but as a central object of research.NEWLINENEWLINEThe framework of the presentation is the one of differential geometry, while the paper is aimed to algebraic geometers, so all the basic concepts are explained thoroughly; in this setting the VMRT is described as a special case of a cone structure.NEWLINENEWLINEAmong the many interesting problems described in this survey there are the problem of the smoothness of the VMRT -- for which there are no satisfactory conditions in general -- and problems related to isotrivial or linear VMRT.NEWLINENEWLINEReviewer's remark: Problem 7.6 has been shown to have a negative answer: there exist Fano manifolds with reducible linear VMRT of positive dimension, see [\textit{R. Munõz}, ``A classification theorem on Fano bundles'', \url{arXiv:1204.4793}].NEWLINENEWLINEFor the entire collection see [Zbl 1242.14002].