Department of Mathematics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1105, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Aart Blokhuis ; Department of Mathematics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1105, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Abstract:
It was a long-standing conjecture in finite geometry that a Desarguesian plane of odd order contains no maximal arcs. A rather inaccessible and long proof was given recently by the authors in collaboration with Mazzocca. In this paper a new observation leads to a greatly simplified proof of the conjecture.