Uniform hyperplanes of finite dual polar spaces of rank 3 (Q5937244): Difference between revisions

Let \(\Delta\) be the point-line geometry arising from a finite dual polar space of rank 3. Then \(\Delta\) is a near hexagon with quads. Let \(H\) be a geometric hyperplane of \(\Delta\). If the intersection of \(H\) with any quad \(Q\) not contained in \(H\) is always the perp of a point in \(Q\) (respectively a full subquadrangle or an ovoid), then the authors call \(H\) locally singular (respectively locally quadrangular or locally ovoidal). In each of these three cases, \(H\) is called uniform. The locally singular geometric hyperplanes are classified by \textit{E. E. Shult} [Lond. Math. Soc. Lect. Note Ser. 165, 229-239 (1992; Zbl 0791.51003)]. In the present paper, the authors classify the locally quadrangular hyperplanes (there are only two examples; one related to the parabolic quadric \(Q(6,2)\) and one related to the Hermitian variety \(H(5,4))\). Moreover, they show that locally ovoidal subspaces \(H\) cannot exist if the geometry \(\Delta\setminus H\) obtained by deleting the points of \(H\) from \(\Delta\) is assumed to be flag transitive. The proofs are rather nice, and combine combinatorial geometry with elementary group theory. I only want to remark that the authors do not always refer to the original source for the results (for instance, two completely different results of Andries Brouwer are used, but Brouwer's name is not mentioned once), and the notation is sometimes not standard (for instance they use \({\mathcal S}(5,2)\) instead of the standard notation \(W(5,2)\) for the non degenerate symplectic space in \(\text{PG}(5,2))\).