On an example of Voisin. (Q5954583)

Deformations of rational curves on smooth Calabi--Yau threefolds have been studied by the first author in an earlier preprint [Cohomology and obstructions II: Curves on \(K\)-trivial threefolds, \texttt{http://arxiv.org/abs/math.AG/0206219}]. There, it was shown that the obstruction theory in this case is essentially determined by the Abel--Jacobi map. Though this can be generalized to families of rational curves if their Hilbert scheme is strongly unobstructed, C. Voisin gave an example for a family of nonrational curves on quintic threefolds with obstructed deformations where this principle fails. In the paper under review, the authors investigate this example in detail. For a quintic \(X\subset \mathbb{P}^4\), they study the family of curves \(C\subset \mathbb{P}^3\subset\mathbb{P}^4\) obtained by projecting a canonical curve of genus five such that \(C\subset X\). They study deformations and obstructions of \((C, X)\), and bound the refined Gromov--Witten invariant for these curves (note that not much is known in general about Gromov--Witten invariants in the obstructed situation).