Projective connections, double fibrations and formal neighbourhoods of lines (Q1813034)

We show that there exists a precise correspondence between the Cartan invariants of a second order differential equation and the cohomology classes classifying the formal neighbourhoods of lines in the surface of flows (or twistor space) of the differential equation. This correspondence is then used to show that the different branches of the classification of these equations arise from the vanishing of certain cohomology classes and that the reduced Cartan invariants correspond to the first non-vanishing cohomology classes obtained after reduction. Finally we show that the characterization of the Painlevé transcendents by means of rationality of relations between invariants becomes quite natural in this context in view of the existence of rational compactifications of the surfaces of initial conditions.