A note on semifield planes admitting irreducible planar Baer collineations (Q1001960)

Let \(\Sigma\) be a semifield spread of a vector space \(W\) over the finite field GF\((q)\) and let \(\pi:W \to W\) be a planar Baer collineation of the translation plane associated with \(\Sigma\). Let \(W_ 1\) denote the image of \(\pi - 1\). The collineation \(\pi\) is called irreducible if it acts irreducibly over the prime field on \(Y \cap W_ 1\) for every fiber \(Y \in \Sigma\) which is fixed by \(\pi\). The author shows that certain planes associated with semifields of Knuth type admit irreducible planar Baer collineations, but he also constructs examples which appear to be new.