Lengths of chains of minimal rational curves on Fano manifolds

In this paper, we consider a natural question how many minimal rational curves are needed to join two general points on a Fano manifold X of Picard number 1. In particular, we study the minimal length of such chains in the cases where the dimension of X is at most 5, the coindex of X is at most 3 and X equips with a structure of a double cover. As an application, we give a better bound on the degree of Fano 5-folds of Picard number 1.