Normal Bundles of Rational Normal Curves on Hypersurfaces

Abstract: Let $C$ be the rational normal curve of degree $e$ in $\mathbb{P}^n$, and let $X\subset \mathbb{P}^n$ be a degree $d\ge 2$ hypersurface containing $C$. In previous work, I. Coskun and E. Riedl showed that the normal bundle $N_{C/X}$ is balanced for a general $X$. H. Larson studied the case of lines ($e=1$) and computed the dimension of the space of hypersurfaces for which $N_{C/X}$ has a given splitting type. In this paper, we work with any $e\ge 2$. We compute explicit examples of hypersurfaces for all possible splitting types, and for $d\ge 3$, we compute the dimension of the space of hypersurfaces for which $N_{C/X}$ has a given splitting type. For $d=2$, we give a lower bound on the maximum rank of quadrics with fixed splitting type.