A family of \(m\)-ovoids of parabolic quadrics (Q5963114)

In this paper, the authors construct \(m\)-ovoids of the generalised quadrangle \(Q(4,q)\). Here, \(Q(4,q)\) denotes the parabolic quadric in the projective space \(\mathrm{PG}(4,q)\) and an \(m\)-ovoid is a subset \(O\) of the point set of \(Q(4,q)\) such that every line meets \(O\) in \(m\) points. The authors start the paper with a nice overview of the state of the art, indicating a.o. that \(m\)-ovoids are relatively rare objects. The main result of this paper is the construction of an infinite family of \(m\)-ovoids of \(Q(4,q)\), with \(m=(q-1)/2\), where \(q\cong 3\) mod \(4\). This construction places examples found by computer in [\textit{J. Bamberg, M. Law} and \textit{T. Penttila}, ``Tight sets and \(m\)-ovoids of generalised quadrangles'', Combinatorica 29, No. 1, 1--17 (2009; \url{doi:10.1007/s00493-009-2179-x})] in an infinite family. The technique used in this paper is orbit stitching: the authors prescribe an automorphism group and take unions of orbits of the point set of \(Q(4,q)\) under the action of this automorphism group. The authors mention that the main difference between the approach in this paper and previous papers where the same technique is applied lies in the fact that the automorphism groups used in this paper are fairly small.