Derived semifield planes of odd order admitting a dihedral group of affine homologies

Derived semifield planes of odd order admitting non-trivial involutorial affine homologies with more than one axis, are examined in detail, under the assumption that the group generated in the translation complement is dihedral. The whole structure of the semifields S coordinatizing such planes is determined. The class of the semifields S of dimension 4 over their centres is characterized.Dedicated to A. Barlotti on the occasion of his 65. birthday.Research partially supported by G.N.S.A.G.A. (C.N.R.)     

Translation planes admitting many homologies

The translation planes with spreads inPG(3,2 ^r ) that admit >2 ^r +1 axes (coaxes) of homologies of orderu1 are classified.Partially supported by FONDECYT Project No. 890-1061     

Translation planes of order 16 admitting a Baer 4-group

All translation planes of order 16, which admit a 4-group fixing a Baer subplane, are determined.     

Transitive affine planes admitting elations

Affine planes which admit a point transitive collineation group and at least one affine elation are considered. Such a plane is shown to be (A,?_∞)-transitive for some point A on ?_t8 and to be a translation plane if at least two distinct elation centers exist. If the plane has at least (order)^1/2+1 distinct elation centers and the group generated by the elations is nonsolvable then the plane is either Desarguesian or Lüneburg-Tits.     

On projective planes admitting elations and homologies

We consider projective planes Π of ordern with abelian collineation group Γ of ordern(n?1) which is generated by (A, m)-elations and (B, l)-homologies wherem =AB andA εl. We prove

1. Ifn is even thenn=2^e and the Sylow 2-subgroup of Γ is elementary abelian.
2. Ifn is odd then the Sylow 2-subgroup of Γ is cyclic.
3. Ifn is a prime then Π is Desarguesian.
4. Ifn is not a square thenn is a prime power.

     

Mendelsohn designs admitting the affine group

All Mendelsohn designs containing a Frobenius group with cyclic complement of orderv – 1 as a subgroup of the automorphism are found. Furthermore, the automorphism group of each of the designs is constructed. These designs generalize Mendelsohn's construction of Mendelsohn designs containing a certain doubly transitive automorphism group.The research on this paper was partially supported by North Texas State Faculty Research Grant #35524.     

Translation planes admitting a pair of index three homology groups

It is shown that a translation plane of order which admits two homology groups of order must in fact admit symmetric homology groups of this order. It is further shown that a plane admitting such symmetric index 3 homology groups is, with a finite number of exceptions, a generalized André plane. A list of the possibly exceptional orders is determined. Received 20 March 2000.     

Translation planes of large dimension admitting nonsolvable groups

In this article, the question is considered whether there exist finite translation planes with arbitrarily small kernels admitting nonsolvable collineation groups. For any integerN, it is shown that there exist translation planes of dimension >N and orderq ³ admittingGL(2,q) as a collineation group.     

A note on finite semifield planes that admit affine homologies

Let be a translation plane of order n that admits an abelian group of order n in its translation complement. If admits an affine homology then it is a semifield plane.