Some basic properties of planar Singer groups

A planar Singer group is a collineation group of a finite (in this article) projective plane acting regularly on the points of the plane. Theorem 1 gives a characterization of abelian planar Singer groups. This leads to a necessary and sufficient condition for an inner automorphism to be a multiplier. The Sylow 2-structure of a multiplier group and some of its consequences are given in Theorem 3. One important result in studying multipliers of an abelian Singer group is the existence of a common fixed line. We extend this to an arbitrary planar Singer group in Theorem 4. Theorem 5 studies the order of an abelian group of multiplers. If this order equals to the order of the plane plus 1, then the number of points of the plane is a prime. If this order is odd, then it is at most the planar order plus 1.Partially supported by a NSA grant.