On permutations of central quadrics which preserve an inner distance

Letq be a regular quadratic form on a vector space (V, $\mathbb{F}$ ) and assume dimV ≥ 4 and ¦ $\mathbb{F}$ ¦ ≥ 4. We consider a permutation ? of the central affine quadric $\mathcal{F}$ := {x εV ¦q(x) = 1} such that $$(*)x \cdot y = \mu \Leftrightarrow x^\varphi \cdot y^\varphi = \mu \forall x,y\varepsilon \mathcal{F}$$ holds true, where μ is a fixed element of $\mathbb{F}$ and where “·” is the scalar product associated withq. We prove that ? is induced (in a certain sense) by a semi-linear bijection (σ,?): (V, $\mathbb{F}$ ) → (V, $\mathbb{F}$ ) such thatq o ?o q, provided $\mathcal{F}$ contains lines and the pair (μ, $\mathbb{F}$ ) has additional properties if there ar no planes in $\mathcal{F}$ . The cases μ,≠ 0 and μ = 0 require different techniques.