Castelnuovo's bound and rigidity in almost complex geometry

Abstract

This article is concerned with the question of whether an energy bound implies a genus bound for pseudo-holomorphic curves in almost complex manifolds. After reviewing what is known in dimensions other than 6, we establish a new result in this direction in dimension 6; in particular, for symplectic Calabi-Yau 6-manifolds. The proof relies on compactness and regularity theorems for J-holomorphic currents.