A compactification of the space of twisted cubics

Abstract

We give an elementary, explicit smooth compactification of a parameter space for the family of twisted cubics. The construction also applies to the family of subschemes defined by determinantal nets of quadrics, e.g., cubic ruled surfaces in $\boldsymbol P^4$, Segre varieties in $\boldsymbol P^5$. It is suitable for applications of Bott's formula to a few enumerative problems.