Normalization of the congruence of bitangents to a hypersurface in \(\mathbb{P}^3\) (Q2674531)

A surface in the Grassmannian of lines of the complex projective space \(\mathbb{P}^3\) is classically called a congruence (of lines). The paper under review is devoted to the study of the family \(B(Y)\) of lines which are tangent to a hypersurface \(Y\) in \(\mathbb{P}^3\) of degree \(d\) at two points. For \(d=4\) it is known that \(B(Y)\) is a smooth irreducible surface, provided that \(Y\) is smooth and contains no line. For \(d \geq 5\), if \(Y\) has at worst isolated singularities and its dual variety is a hypersurface, then \(B(Y)\) is in fact a congruence, named the Fano congruence of bitangents to \(Y\). However, it is not smooth, even when \(Y\) is general. The authors consider its normalization \(S(Y)\) and show that, for \(Y\) general and \(d \geq 5\), \(S(Y)\) is a smooth irreducible projective surface. Moreover, they prove that for an arbitrary \(Y\), \(S(Y)\) is smooth at any point representing a line \(\ell \subset\mathbb{P}^3\) such that \(\ell \not\subset Y\), \(Y\) is smooth at the two tangency points and they are disjoint from the further intersections. Furthermore, the authors describe the singularities of the Fano congruence of bitangents occurring in a general Lefschetz pencil in the space of hypersurfaces of degree \(d\).