Large semisimple groups on 16-dimensional compact projective planes are almost simple

The paper deals with the so-called Salzmann program aiming to classify special geometries according to their automorphism groups. Here, topological connected compact projective planes are considered. If finite-dimensional, such planes are of dimension 2, 4, 8, or 16. The classical example of a 16-dimensional, compact projective plane is the projective plane over the octonions with 78-dimensional automorphism group E₆(?26). A 16-dimensional, compact projective plane P admitting an automorphism group of dimension 41 or more is classical, [18] 87.5 and 87.7. For the special case of a semisimple group Δ acting on P the same result can be obtained if dim δ ≧ 37, see [16]. Our aim is to lower this bound. We show: if Δ is semisimple and dim δ ≧ 29, then P is either classical or a Moufang-Hughes plane or Δ is isomorphic to Spin₉ (?, r), r ∈ {0, 1 }. The underlying paper contains the first part of the proof showing that Δ is in fact almost simple.     

Large Almost Simple Groups Acting on 16-Dimensional Compact Projective Planes

 This paper deals with the so-called Salzmann program aiming to classify special geometries according to their automorphism groups. Here, topological connected compact projective planes are considered. If finite-dimensional, such planes are of dimension 2, 4, 8, or 16. The classical example of a 16-dimensional, compact projective plane is the projective plane over the octonions with 78-dimensional automorphism group E₆(−26). A 16-dimensional, compact projective plane ? admitting an automorphism group of dimension 41 or more is clasical, [23] 87.5 and 87.7. For the special case of a semisimple group Δ acting on ? the same result can be obtained if dim , see [22]. Our aim is to lower this bound. We show: if Δ is semisimple and dim , then ? is either classical or a Moufang-Hughes plane or Δ is isomorphic to Spin₉ (ℝ, r), r∈{0, 1}. The proof consists of two parts. In [16] it has been shown that Δ is in fact almost simple or isomorphic to SL₃?ċSpin₃ℝ. In the underlying paper we can therefore restrict our considerations to the case that Δ is almost simple, and the corresponding planes are classified. Received 10 February 1997; in final form 19 December 1997     

Large Almost Simple Groups Acting on 16-Dimensional Compact Projective Planes

 This paper deals with the so-called Salzmann program aiming to classify special geometries according to their automorphism groups. Here, topological connected compact projective planes are considered. If finite-dimensional, such planes are of dimension 2, 4, 8, or 16. The classical example of a 16-dimensional, compact projective plane is the projective plane over the octonions with 78-dimensional automorphism group E₆(−26). A 16-dimensional, compact projective plane ? admitting an automorphism group of dimension 41 or more is clasical, [23] 87.5 and 87.7. For the special case of a semisimple group Δ acting on ? the same result can be obtained if dim , see [22]. Our aim is to lower this bound. We show: if Δ is semisimple and dim , then ? is either classical or a Moufang-Hughes plane or Δ is isomorphic to Spin₉ (ℝ, r), r∈{0, 1}. The proof consists of two parts. In [16] it has been shown that Δ is in fact almost simple or isomorphic to SL₃?ċSpin₃ℝ. In the underlying paper we can therefore restrict our considerations to the case that Δ is almost simple, and the corresponding planes are classified.     

Spreads of T 2(o), α-flocks and Ovals

We establish a representation of a spread of the generalized quadrangle T ₂(0), o an oval of PG(2, q), q even, in terms of a certain family of q ovals of PG(2, q) and investigate the properties of this representation. Using this representation we show that to every flock of a translation oval cone in PG(3, q) (-flock), q even, there corresponds a spread of T ₂(o) for an oval o determined by the -flock. This gives constructions of new spreads of T ₂(o), for certain ovals o, and in some cases solves the existence problem for spreads. It also provides a geometrical characterization of the ovals associated with a flock of a quadratic cone.     

Two-transitive parabolic ovals

We investigate finite affine planes of even order possessing a parabolic oval and a collineation group G which leaves invariant and acts 2-transitively on its affine points. The main attention is devoted to translation planes. The odd order case has already been considered by Enea and Korchmaros in [5]. Our main result shows that if has even order and possesses two 2-transitive parabolic ovals which share at least two, but not all their affine points, then is Desarguesian. Received 20 July 1998.     

Absolute Points of Continuous and Smooth Polarities

This paper deals with sets of absolute points of continuous or smooth polarities in compact, connected or smooth projective planes, called topological polar unitals or smooth polar unitals, respectively. We will show that topological polar unitals are Z₂-homology spheres. In the four-dimensional case, a topological polar unital U is either a topological oval, or any line which intersects U in more than one point intersects in a set homeomorphic to S₁. Smooth polar unitals turn out to be smoothly embedded submanifolds of the point space. Moreover, secants intersect such unitals transversally. For these unitals, we will obtain full information on the existence of secants, tangents and exterior lines through given points according to their position with respect to the unital. The main result of this paper states that the possible dimensions of smooth polar unitals coincide with those of sets of absolute points of continuous polarities in the classical projective planes P₂F, F?{R,C,H,O}. Finally, we will prove that smooth polar unitals in four-dimensional smooth projective planes are topological ovals or are homeomorphic to S₃.     

On 2-dimensional Laguerre planes of shift type

We construct 2-dimensional Laguerre planes of shift type and determine the automorphism groups and isomorphism classes of these planes. Laguerre planes of shift type occur in the classification of 2-dimensional Laguerre planes with 4-dimensional automorphism groups that fix precisely one parallel class.     

Termination of (many) 4-dimensional log flips

We prove that any sequence of 4-dimensional log flips that begins with a klt pair (X,D) such that -(K _X +D) is numerically equivalent to an effective divisor, terminates. This implies termination of flips that begin with a log Fano pair and termination of flips in a relative birational setting. We also prove termination of directed flips with big K _X +D. As a consequence, we prove existence of minimal models of 4-dimensional dlt pairs of general type, existence of 5-dimensional log flips, and rationality of Kodaira energy in dimension 4.     

A Family Of 2-Dimensional Minkowski Planes with Small Automorphism Groups

This paper concerns 2-dimensional (topological locally compact connected) Minkowski planes. It uses a construction of J. Jakóbowski [4] of Minkowski planes over half-ordered fields and applies it to the field of reals. This generalizes a construction by A. Schenkel [7] of 2-dimensional Minkowski planes admitting a 3-dimensional kernel. It is shown that most planes in this family of Minkowski planes have 0-dimensional and even trivial automorphism groups.     

d‐homogeneous and d‐ultrahomogeneous linear spaces

A linear space S is d‐homogeneous if, whenever the linear structures induced on two subsets S₁ and S₂ of cardinality at most d are isomorphic, there is at least one automorphism of S mapping S₁ onto S₂. S is called d‐ultrahomogeneous if each isomorphism between the linear structures induced on two subsets of cardinality at most d can be extended into an automorphism of S. We have proved in [11;] (without any finiteness assumption) that every 6‐homogeneous linear space is homogeneous (that is d‐homogeneous for every positive integer d). Here we classify completely the finite nontrivial linear spaces that are d‐homogeneous for d ≥ 4 or d‐ultrahomogeneous for d ≥ 3. We also prove an existence theorem for infinite nontrivial 4‐ultrahomogeneous linear spaces. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Combin Designs 8: 321–329, 2000     

Dimension and automorphism groups of lattices

Every group is the automorphism group of a lattice of order dimension at most 4. We conjecture that the automorphism groups of finite modular lattices of bounded dimension do not represent every finite group. It is shown that ifp is a large prime dividing the order of the automorphism group of a finite modular latticeL then eitherL has high order dimension orM _p, the lattice of height 2 and orderp+2, has a cover-preserving embedding inL. We mention a number of open problems. Presented by C. R. Platt.     

Hyperbolic manifolds with high-dimensional automorphism group

We survey our recent classification results for Kobayashi-hyperbolic n-dimensional manifolds with holomorphic automorphism group of dimension at least n ² − 1 for n ≥ 2.     

Sixteen-Dimensional Locally Compact Translation Planes with Large Automorphism Groups having no Fixed Points

The 16-dimensional compact projective planes whose automorphism group contains a closed connected subgroup fixing a line, but no point and having dimension at least 35 are determined. It is shown that these planes all belong to three families of planes determined by H. Löwe and the author, and hence are explicitly known. A major stepping stone to this goal is a result by H. Salzmann according to which every such plane is a translation plane.     

The Automorphism Groups of Finite Type G-Structures on Orbifolds

The automorphism group of a G-structure of finite type and order k on a smooth n-dimensional orbifold is proved to be a Lie group of dimension n+dim(g+g ₁+...+g _k-1), where g _i is the ith prolongation of the Lie algebra g of a given group G. This generalizes the corresponding result by Ehresmann for finite type G-structures on manifolds. The presence of orbifold points is shown to sharply decrease the dimension of the automorphism group of proper orbifolds. Estimates are established for the dimension of the isometry group and the dimension of the group of conformal transformations of Riemannian orbifolds, depending on the types of orbifold points.     

Smooth Hughes planes are classical

We prove that the only compact projective Hughes planes which are smooth projective planes are the classical planes over the complex numbers \Bbb C \Bbb C , the quaternions \Bbb H \Bbb H , and the Caley numbers \Bbb O \Bbb O . As a by-product this shows that an 8-dimensional smooth projective plane which admits a collineation group of dimension d 3 17d \geq 17 is isomorphic to the quaternion projective plane P ₂\Bbb H {\cal P _2\Bbb H }. For topological compact projective planes this is true if d 3 19d \geq 19, and this bound is sharp.     

On the vanishing of subspaces of alternating bilinear forms

Given a field F and integer n≥3, we introduce an invariant s_n (F) which is defined by examining the vanishing of subspaces of alternating bilinear forms on 2-dimensional subspaces of vector spaces. This invariant arises when we calculate the largest dimension of a subspace of n?×?n skew-symmetric matrices over F which contains no elements of rank 2. We show how to calculate s_n (F) for various families of field F, including finite fields. We also prove the existence of large subgroups of the commutator subgroup of certain p-groups of class 2 which contain no non-identity commutators.     

A characterisation of spreads ovally-derived from Desarguesian spreads

We characterise all spreads that are obtainable from Desarguesian spreads by replacing a partial spread consisting of translation ovals; the corresponding ovally-derived planes are generalised André planes, of order 2 ^N , although not all generalised André planes are ovallyderived from Desarguesian planes. Our analysis allows us to obtain a complete classification of all nearfield planes that are ovally-derived from Desarguesian planes. It turns out that whether or not a nearfield plane is ovally-derived from a Desarguesian plane depends solely on the parametersq andr, where GF (q) is the kern, andr is the dimension of the plane. Our results also imply that a Hall plane of even orderq ² can be ovally-derived from a Desarguesian spread if and only ifq is a square.     

Nonclassical 4-Dimensional Minkowski Planes Obtained as Brothers of Semiclassical 4-Dimensional Laguerre Planes

We describe the first nonclassical 4-dimensional Minkowski planes and show that they have 6-dimensional automorphism groups. These planes are obtained by a construction of Schroth [18] from generalized quadrangles associated with the semiclassical 4-dimensional Laguerre planes. All 4-dimensional Minkowski planess that can be obtained in this way from the semiclassical 4-dimensional Laguerre planes are determined.     

Complex<Emphasis Type="BoldItalic">n</Emphasis>-dimensional manifolds with a real<Emphasis Type="BoldItalic">n</Emphasis><Superscript>2</Superscript>-dimensional automorphism group

The main theorem of this article is a characterization of non compact simply connected complete Kobayashi hyperbolic complex manifold of dimension n≽ 2 with real n ²-dimensional holomorphic automorphism group. Together with the earlier work [11, 12] and [13] of Isaev and Krantz, this yields a complete classification of the simply-connected, complete Kobayashi hyperbolic manifolds with dim_ℝ Aut (M) ≽ (dim_ℂ M)².     

An infinite family of simply connected flag-transitive tilde geometries

We consider tilde-geometries (orT-geometries), which are geometries belonging to diagrams of the following shape: Here the rightmost edge stands for the famous triple cover of the classical generalized quadrangle related to the group Sp₄(2). The automorphism group of the cover is the nonsplit extension 3·Sp₄(2) – 3 ·S ₆. Five examples of flag-transitiveT-geometries were known. These are rank 3 geometries related to the groupsM ₂₄ (the Mathieu group),He (the Held group) and and 3⁷·Sp₆(2) (a nonsplit extension); a rank 4 geometry related to the Conway groupCo ₁ and a rank 5 geometry related to the Fischer-Griess Monster groupF ₁. In the present paper we construct an infinite family of flag-transitiveT-geometries and prove that all the new geometries are simply connected. The automorphism group of the rankn geometry in the family is a nonsplit extension of a 3-group by the symplectic group Sp_2n (2). The rank of the 3-group is equal to the number of 2-dimensional subspaces in ann-dimensional vector space over GF(2).