Orbit parametrizations of theta characteristics on hypersurfaces over arbitrary fields

Abstract: It is well-known that theta characteristics on smooth plane curves over a field of characteristic different from two are in bijection with certain smooth complete intersections of three quadrics. We generalize this bijection to possibly singular hypersurfaces of any dimension over arbitrary fields including those of characteristic two. It is accomplished in terms of linear orbits of tuples of symmetric matrices instead of smooth complete intersections of quadrics. As an application of our methods, we give a description of the projective automorphism groups of complete intersections of quadrics generalizing Beauville's results.