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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Kiermaier, Michael
Format: Preprint
Published: 2021
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.00365
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author Kiermaier, Michael
author_facet Kiermaier, Michael
contents Arguably, the most important open problem in the theory of $q$-analogs of designs is the question for the existence of a $q$-analog $D$ of the Fano plane. It is undecided for every single prime power value $q \geq 2$. A point $P$ is called an $α$-point of $D$ if the derived design of $D$ in $P$ is a geometric spread. In 1996, Simon Thomas has shown that there must always exist at least one non-$α$-point. For the binary case $q = 2$, Olof Heden and Papa Sissokho have improved this result in 2016 by showing that the non-$α$-points must form a blocking set with respect to the hyperplanes. In this article, we show that a hyperplane consisting only of $α$-points implies the existence of a partiton of the symplectic generalized quadrangle $W(q)$ into spreads. As a consequence, the statement of Heden and Sissokho is generalized to all primes $q$ and all even values of $q$.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2105_00365
institution arXiv
publishDate 2021
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle On $α$-points of $q$-analogs of the Fano plane
Kiermaier, Michael
Combinatorics
Arguably, the most important open problem in the theory of $q$-analogs of designs is the question for the existence of a $q$-analog $D$ of the Fano plane. It is undecided for every single prime power value $q \geq 2$. A point $P$ is called an $α$-point of $D$ if the derived design of $D$ in $P$ is a geometric spread. In 1996, Simon Thomas has shown that there must always exist at least one non-$α$-point. For the binary case $q = 2$, Olof Heden and Papa Sissokho have improved this result in 2016 by showing that the non-$α$-points must form a blocking set with respect to the hyperplanes. In this article, we show that a hyperplane consisting only of $α$-points implies the existence of a partiton of the symplectic generalized quadrangle $W(q)$ into spreads. As a consequence, the statement of Heden and Sissokho is generalized to all primes $q$ and all even values of $q$.
title On $α$-points of $q$-analogs of the Fano plane
topic Combinatorics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.00365