Minitwistor spaces, Severi varieties, and Einstein-Weyl structure

In this article, we show that the space of nodal rational curves, which is so called a Severi variety (of rational curves), on any non-singular projective surface is always equipped with a natural Einstein-Weyl structure, if the space is 3-dimensional. This is a generalization of the Einstein-Weyl structure on the space of smooth rational curves on a complex surface, given by Hitchin. As geometric objects naturally associated to Einstein-Weyl structure, we investigate null surfaces and geodesics on the Severi varieties. Also, we see that if the projective surface has an appropriate real structure, then the real locus of the Severi variety becomes a positive definite Einstein-Weyl manifold. Moreover, we construct various explicit examples of rational surfaces having 3-dimensional Severi varieties of rational curves.