On Embeddings of the Flag Geometries of Projective Planes in Finite Projective Spaces

The flag geometry =() of a finite projective plane of order s is the generalized hexagon of order (s, 1) obtained from by putting equal to the set of all flags of , by putting equal to the set of all points and lines of and where I is the natural incidence relation (inverse containment), i.e., is the dual of the double of in the sense of Van Maldeghem Mal:98. Then we say that is fully and weakly embedded in the finite projective space PG(d, q) if is a subgeometry of the natural point-line geometry associated with PG(d, q), if s = q, if the set of points of generates PG(d, q), and if the set of points of not opposite any given point of does not generate PG(d, q). Preparing the classification of all such embeddings, we construct in this paper the classical examples, prove some generalities and show that the dimension d of the projective space belongs to {6,7,8}.