Embedding finite partial linear spaces in finite translation nets (Q1021337)

A partial linear space is an incidence structure where any two distinct lines meet in at most one point, and each line contains at least two points. The paper deals with embedding problems for finite partial linear space. The problem of whether every finite partial linear space is embeddable in a finite projective plane, originally posed by \textit{P. Erdős} [Proc. 10th southeast. Conf. Combinatorics, graph theory and computing, Boca Raton 1979, Vol. I, Congr. Numerantium 23, 19--37 (1979; Zbl 0429.05047)], is still wide open. The authors attack similar problems, by considering incidence structures different from projective planes. The main achievement is that every finite partial linear space can be embedded in a finite translation net generated by a partial spread of a vector space of even dimension. Embeddings in André planes are also investigated. It is shown that for every \(k\) there exists a partial linear space which does not embed in any André plane of dimension \(t\leq k\) over its kernel.