Spaces of conics on low degree complete intersections

Abstract

Let X be a smooth complete intersection. Suppose p and q are general points of X, we consider conics in X passing through p and q. We show the moduli space of these conics is a smooth complete intersection. The main ingredients of the proof are a criterion for characterizing when a smooth projective variety is a complete intersection, the Grothendieck-Riemann-Roch theorem and the geometry of the spaces of conics.