Infinite flocks of a quadratic cone (Q2563499): Difference between revisions

If the characteristic of a field is either zero or an odd number, the field is said to be full if the product of two non-square elements is always a square -- i.e. the non-zero squares form a subgroup of index two in the multiplicative group. Throughout, the authors use two full fields \(K\) and \(F\), where \(K\) is an extension of \(F\) obtained by adjoining the square root of a non-square in \(F\). Much as in the case where \(K\) and \(F\) are finite, the Desarguesian affine plane \(\Sigma\) over \(K\) becomes a 4-dimensional vector space over \(F\). One can proceed as in the finite case to use nest replacement to get non-Desarguesian planes from \(\Sigma\) with properties similar to ones obtained in finite case. One also gets flocks in quadratic cones in \(PC(3,K)\) using elation groups that give rise to reguli.