Foliations by curves on threefolds

Abstract

We study the conormal sheaves and singular schemes of 1-dimensional foliations on smooth projective varieties $X$ of dimension 3 and Picard rank 1. We prove that if the singular scheme has dimension 0, then the conormal sheaf is $\mu$-stable whenever the tangent bundle $TX$ is stable, and apply this fact to the characterization of certain irreducible components of the moduli space of rank 2 reflexive sheaves on $\mathbb{P}^3$ and on a smooth quadric hypersurface $Q_3\subset\mathbb{P}^4$. Finally, we give a classification of local complete intersection foliations, that is, foliations with locally free conormal sheaves, of degree 0 and 1 on $Q_3$.