January 25th, 2000.

Algebraic Geometry Lectures

Cortona, Italy, July 23rd - August 12th, 2000

Rational curves and higher dimensional geometry

Provisional Program

1. Introduction: existence of rational curves on manifolds whose canonical divisor is not nef, cone theorem of Mori, extremal rays, contractions, examples. Readings : [CKM] Lect. 1 - 4, [KM] Chap. 1 and [K] II.4, III.1.
2. Deformations of curves and schemes parametrizing curves on manifolds: definition and existence of Hom and Hilb, obstructions to deformation, dimension and smoothness of Hom and Hilb, universal families, evaluation morphism and its tangent. Readings : [K] I.1, I.2 and [MP] I.1, I.2.
3. Proof of the existence of rational curves on manifolds with K_X not nef, proof of Mori cone theorem. Readings : [CKM] Lect. 1 - 4, [KM] Chap. 1, [K] II.4, III.1 and [MP] I.2
4. Locus of extremal rays and cohomological invariants related to them. Extremal ray contractions are topologically elementary. Readings : [K] IV.2, V.1 and [W1].
5. Uniruled and rationaly connected varieties: existence of good curves, smoothening of curves, bound on the degree of Fano manifolds with b_2=1. Readings : [K] II.3, IV.1 - IV.3, V.2 and [KMM].
6. Low degree rational curves on Fano manifolds; contact Fano manifolds; classification results. Readings : [K] V.1, V.3, [W2].

Prerequisite
The students are expected to have good general background in algebra, topology, complex and algebraic geometry. The latter should include the language of schemes and their morphisms as in Hartshorne's texbook [H].
Main Textbook
[K] Kollar, Rational curves on algebraic varieties, Ergebnisse der Mathematik u Grenzgebiete 32, Springer 1996.
Additional Readings:
[CKM] Clemens, Kollar, Mori, Higher dimensional complex geometry, Asterisque 166, SMF 1988.
[DB] Debarre, Introduction to methods in higher-dimensional algebraic geometry, lecture notes, ps file from Olivier Debarre's home page.
[H] Hartshorne, Algebraic Geometry, Graduate Text in Math 52, Springer 1977.
[KM] Kollar, Mori, Birational geometry of algebraic varieties, Cambridge Tracts in Math 134.
[KMM] Kollar, Miyaoka, Mori, Rational curves on Fano varieties, in Springer Lect Notes in Math 1515.
[MP] Miyaoka, Peternell, Geometry of higher dimensional algebraic varieties, DMV Seminar 26, Birkhauser 1997.
[W1] Wisniewski, Cohomological invariants of complex manifolds coming from extremal rays, in Asian J Math 2; ps file.
[W2] Wisniewski, Lines and conics on contact Fano manifolds, preprint; ps file.

Jaroslaw A. Wisniewski