Elliptic curves in hyper-K\"ahler varieties

Abstract

We show that the moduli space of elliptic curves of minimal degree in a general Fano variety of lines of a cubic fourfold is a non-singular curve of genus $631$. The curve admits a natural involution with connected quotient. We find that the general Fano contains precisely $3780$ elliptic curves of minimal degree with fixed (general) $j$-invariant. More generally, we express (modulo a transversality result) the enumerative count of elliptic curves of minimal degree in hyper-K\"ahler varieties with fixed $j$-invariant in terms of Gromov--Witten invariants. In $K3[2]$-type this leads to explicit formulas of these counts in terms of modular forms.