First order deformations of pairs and non-existence of rational curves (Q309483)

General hypersurfaces \(X\) of high degree, in a complex projective space, are unlikely to contain \textit{rational} subvarieties. This is a general non-sense statement which produced several precise mathematical results in the recent literature. In the paper under review, the author studies the following different (but related) problem. Consider a specific, smooth hypersurce \(X_0\), which does contain a rational curve \(C_0\). Assume that all the first order deformations of \(X_0\) also contain a deformation of \(C_0\). Then the author finds obstructions which imply that the degree of \(C_0\) cannot assume values in a well-defined range. The range is given in terms of the degree of \(X_0\) and the dimension of \(H^0(\mathcal O_{C_0}(1))\).