Coordinate rings of topological Klingenberg planes II: the algebraic foundation for a projective theory

Ternary fields are the coordinate rings of affine and projective planes; however, the planes constructed over topological ternary fields are not necessarily topological. Surprisingly, the explanation of this phenomenon becomes evident in the more general theory of topological Klingenberg planes as we exhibited in [3] for the affine case. However, in the projective setting, we have a more formidable task. We must develop a new coordinate ring that admits a topological structure suitable for coordinatizing topological PK-planes. We accomplish this in two stages. In this paper, we revisit the standard coordinate rings [1, 11], discuss and resolve their deficiencies by developing a new coordinate ring as a unique extension of these refined standard rings. In a subsequent paper [4], we show that this new ring can be suitably topologized to coordinatize a topological PK-plane. This last result can then be used to explain why topological ternary fields do not necessarily coordinatize topological projective planes. Received 17 February 2000; revised 10 June 2000.