The tangent bundle of a Calabi-Yau manifold-deformations and restriction to rational curves

The tangent bundle _X of a Calabi-Yau threefoldX is the only known example of a stable bundle with non-trivial restriction to any rational curve onX. By deforming the direct sum of _X and the trivial line bundle one can try to obtain new examples. We use algebro-geometric techniques to derive results in this direction. The relation to the finiteness of rational curves on Calabi-Yau threefolds is discussed.