Orthogonal dual hyperovals, symplectic spreads, and orthogonal spreads (Q2256056)

A dual hyperoval (DHO) \(\mathbf D\) of rank \(n > 2\) is a set of \(n\)-dimensional subspaces which spans a finite \(\mathbb F_q\)-vector space \(V\) and such that \(|{\mathbf D}| = (q^n -1)/(q -1)+1\), \(\dim (X_1 \cap X_2) = 1\) and \(X_1 \cap X_2 \cap X_3 = \{{\mathbf 0}_{V}\}\) for every three different \(X_1, X_2, X_3 \in {\mathbf D}\). An orthogonal DHO is a DHO in an orthogonal space \(V^+(2n, 2)\) having all members totally singular. The authors construct from an orthogonal spread in \(V^+(2n + 2, 2)\) an orthogonal DHO in \(V=V^+(2n,2)\) which splits over a particular totally singular space \(Y\), that is \(V = X \oplus Y\) for each DHO member \(X\). A spread in \(V\) is called \textit{symplectic} if there is a nondegenerate alternating bilinear form on \(V\) such that all members of the spread are totally isotropic. To a symplectic spread \(S\) it is possible to associate an orthogonal DHO in \(V^+(2n, 2)\) which is called \textit{shadow} of \(S\). The authors prove that for odd composite \(n\) there are more than \(2^{n(\rho(n)-2)}/n^2\) pairwise inequivalent orthogonal DHOs in \(V^+(2n, 2)\) that are shadows of symplectic semifield spreads, where \(\rho(n)\) denotes the number of (not necessarily distinct) prime factors of the integer \(n\). Finally, they prove that for odd composite \(n > 27\) there are more than \(2^{3^{\rho(n)-1}} \) pairwise inequivalent orthogonal DHOs in \(V^+(2n, 2)\) which admit a cyclic group of order \(2^n - 1\) that fixes one member of the DHO and acts regularly on the remaining ones.