Further translation planes of order 19<Superscript>2</Superscript> admitting SL(2,5), obtained by nest replacement

We construct three translation planes of order 19² admitting SL(2,5), obtained by replacement of 24-nests of reguli in PG(3,19).     

Two-transitive groups on a hyperbolic unital

A classification given previously of all projective translation planes of order q² that admit a collineation group G admitting a two-transitive orbit of q+1 points is applied to show that the only projective translation planes of order q² admitting a hyperbolic unital acting two-transitively on a secant are the Desarguesian planes and the unital is a Buekenhout hyperbolic unital.     

Desarguesian partial parallelisms

This article establishes connections between Desarguesian partial parallelisms of deficiency one in PG(3,q) and translation planes of orderq ⁴ admitting a collineation group isomorphic to SL(2,q) which is generated by Baer collineations.The author is grateful to Professor Alan Prince for helpful conversations with respect to this article and, in particular, with respect to the actual bounds for certain maximal partial spreads.The author is grateful to the referee for helpful comments in the writing of this article.     

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.     

The translation planes of order 81 that admit SL(2,5), generated by affine elations

The translation planes of order 81 admitting SL(2, 5), generated by affine elations, are completely determined. There are seven mutually non-isomorphic translation planes, of which five are new. Each of these planes may be derived producing another set of seven mutually non-isomorphic translation planes admitting SL(2, 5), where the 3-elements are Baer. Of this latter set, five planes are new.     

Some Multiply Derived Translation Planes with SL(2,5) as an Inherited Collineation Group in the Translation Complement

Finite translation planes having a collineation group isomorphic to SL(2,5) occur in many investigations on minimal normal non-solvable subgroups of linear translation complements. In this paper, we are looking for multiply derived translation planes of the desarguesian plane which have an inherited linear collineation group isomorphic to SL(2,5). The Hall plane and some of the planes discovered by Prohaska [10], see also [1], are translation planes of this kind of order q ²;, provided that q is odd and either q ²; 1 mod 5 or q is a power of 5. In this paper the case q ² -1 mod 5 is considered and some examples are constructed under the further hypothesis that either q 2 mod 3, or q 1 mod 3 and q 1 mod 4, or q -1 mod 4, 3 q and q 3,5 or 6 mod 7. One might expect that examples exist for each odd prime power q. But this is not always true according to Theorem 2.     

Translation planes of order q 2 admitting a two-transitive orbit of length q + 1 on the line at infinity

A classification is given of all translation planes of order q ² that admit a collineation group G admitting a two-transitive orbit of q + 1 points on the line at infinity.     

On translation planes of orderq 3 that admit a collineation group of orderq 3

Let II be a translation plane of orderq ³, with kernel GF(q) forq a prime power, that admits a collineation groupG of orderq ³ in the linear translation complement. Moreover, assume thatG fixes a point at infinity, acts transitively on the remaining points at infinity andG/E is an abelian group of orderq ², whereE is the elation group ofG.In this article, we determined all such translation planes. They are (i) elusive planes of type I or II or (ii) desirable planes.Furthermore, we completely determined the translation planes of orderp ³, forp a prime, admitting a collineation groupG of orderp ³ in the translation complement such thatG fixes a point at infinity and acts transitively on the remaining points at infinity. They are (i) semifield planes of orderp ³ or (ii) the Sherk plane of order 27.     

Collineation groups of translation planes admitting hyperbolic Buekenhout or parabolic Buekenhout-Metz unitals

It is shown that for every semifield spread in PG(3,q) and for every parabolic Buekenhout-Metz unital, there is a collineation group of the associated translation plane that acts transitively and regularly on the affine points of the parabolic unital. Conversely, any spread admitting such a group is shown to be a semifield spread. For hyperbolic Buekenhout unitals, various collineation groups of translation planes admitting such unitals and the associated planes are determined.     

Subregular planes admitting elations

New classes of subregular planes are constructed that admit elation groups or Baer groups of order > 2. Further, we construct a variety of large dimension translation planes admitting many elations.     

On GMW Designs and Cyclic Hadamard Designs

We generalise results of Jackson concerning cyclic Hadamard designs admitting SL(2,2ⁿ) as a point transitive automorphism group. The generalisation concerns the designs of Gordon, Mills and Welch and we characterise these as designs admitting GM(m,qⁿ) acting in a certain way. We also generalise a construction given by Maschietti, using hyperovals, of cyclic Hadamard designs, and characterise these amongst the designs of Gordon, Mills and Welch.     

Shear planes

A shear plane is a 2n-dimensional stable plane admitting a quasi-perspective collineation group which is a vector group of the same dimension 2n and fixes no point. We show that all of these planes can be derived from a special kind of partial spreads by a construction analogous to the construction of (punctured) dual translation planes from compact spreads. Finally we give a criterion (and examples) for shear planes which are not isomorphic to an open subplane of a topological projective plane.     

A new class of square order planes

Only a few classes of square order planes are known. These are generalized André planes (including Hall planes), flag transitive planes, Hering's planes and Walker's planes. A new class of planes of order 5^2r, where r is an odd natural number, is constructed and the translation complements of the corresponding planes have been determined. The translation complements divide the sets of distinguished points into 4 orbits of lengths 1, 1, 5^r ? 1, and 5^2r ? 5^r and it is of order 5^r(5^r ? 1)² if r ≠ 1. In the particular case of r = 1, the translation complement divides the set of distinguished points into two orbits of lengths 6 and 20 and it is of order 480.     

Spreads,ovoids andS 5

We consider translation planes of orderq ² (whereq andq ² - 1 are coprime to 30) such thatS ₅ acts on the line at infinity. It turns out that the Klein correspondence is in particular useful for the investigation of these planes. Representations of the planes, automorphisms and examples of low order are studied in detail. In view of a problem of Ostrom (Math. Z. 156 (1977), 59–71), series of translation planes are constructed with the following property: the translation complement is nonsolvable and has an order coprime to the characteristic of the plane.     

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.)     

Ovoids and translation planes revisited

Kantor has previously described the translation planes which may be obtained by projecting sections of ovoids in ⁺(8, q)-spaces to ovoids in corresponding ⁺(6, q)-spaces. Since the Klein correspondence associates spreads in 4-dimensional vector spaces with ovoids in ⁺(6, q)-spaces, there are corresponding translation planes of order q ² and kernel containing GF(q). In this article, we revisit some of these translation planes and give some presentations of the spreads. Motivated by various properties of the planes, we study, in general, translation planes which admit certain homology groups and/or elation groups. In particular, we develop new constructions of projective planes of Lenz-Barlotti class II-1.Finally, we show how certain projective planes of order q ² of Lenz-Barlotti class II-1 may be considered equivalent to flocks of quadratic cones in PG(3, q).This work was partially supported by NSF grant DMS-8800843.     

Hyperbolic Fibrations and q-Clans

We show there is a bijection between regular hyperbolic fibrations with constant back half and normalized q-clans. Thus there is also a bijection with flocks of a quadratic cone, once a conic of the flock has been specified. This yields a plethora of two-dimensional translation planes of even and odd order which arise from spreads admitting a regular elliptic cover.     

4-Dimensional Elation Laguerre Planes Admitting Non-Solvable Automorphism Groups

 This paper concerns 4-dimensional (topological locally compact connected) elation Laguerre planes that admit non-solvable automorphism groups. It is shown that such a plane is either semi-classical or a single plane admitting the group SL(2, ). Various characterizations of this single Laguerre plane are obtained. Received October 17 2000; in revised form April 23 2001 Published online August 5, 2002     

The translation planes of order q2 that admit SL(2,q) as a collineation group. II. Odd order

Let be a translation plane of odd order q², where q=p^r and p is a prime. If admits SL(2,q) (or PSL(2,q)) as a collineation group then is a Desarguesian, Hall, or Hering plane, or one of two Walker planes of order 25.Partially supported by grants from the National Science Foundation.