On rational maps from a general surface in P^3 to surfaces of general type

Abstract

We study the dominant rational maps from a general surface in P^{3} to surfaces of general type. We prove restrictions on the target surfaces, and special properties of the rational maps. We show that for a small degree the general surface has no such map. Moreover a slight improvement of a result of Catanese, on the number of moduli of a surface of general type, is also obtained.