Characterisations of elementary pseudo-caps and good eggs (Q2260623)

Summary: In this note, we use the theory of Desarguesian spreads to investigate good eggs. Thas showed that an egg in \(\mathrm{PG}(4n-1,q)\), \(q\) odd, with two good elements is elementary. By a short combinatorial argument, we show that a similar statement holds for large pseudo-caps, in odd and even characteristic. As a corollary, this improves and extends the result of \textit{J. A. Thas} et al. [Translation generalized quadrangles. Hackensack, NJ: World Scientific (2006; Zbl 1126.51007)] where one needs at least \(4\) good elements of an egg in even characteristic to obtain the same conclusion. We rephrase this corollary to obtain a characterisation of the generalised quadrangle \(T_3(O)\) of Tits. \textit{M. Lavrauw} [Discrete Math. 301, No. 1, 106--116 (2005; Zbl 1083.51003)] characterises elementary eggs in odd characteristic as those good eggs containing a space that contains at least \(5\) elements of the egg, but not the good element. We provide an adaptation of this characterisation for weak eggs in odd and even characteristic. As a corollary, we obtain a direct geometric proof for the theorem of Lavrauw.