Characterizations of Hermitian varieties by intersection numbers (Q1009095)

An important direction of research in finite geometries is to characterize classical structures by their combinatorial properties. An example of this point of view is the famous Segre Theorem on \(q+1\) arcs in Desarguesian projective planes of odd order \(q\) [\textit{B. Segre}, Can. J. Math. 7, 414--416 (1955; Zbl 0065.13402)], which characterizes the conics of \(\mathrm{PG}(2, q)\), \(q\) odd, as sets of points of size \(q+1\) meeting every line of the plane in \(0\), \(1\) or \(2\) points. In the literature of finite geometry we can find many papers that can be considered from this point of view, they contain characterizations of quadrics, normal rational curves, Baer subspaces, Hermitian arcs, and so on. The paper under review belongs to this point of view, and it contains characterizations of the classical generalized quadrangles \(H(3, q^2)\) and \(H(4, q^2)\), embedded in \(\mathrm{PG}(3, q^2)\) and \(\mathrm{PG}(4, q^2)\), respectively. The intersections with lines and planes characterize \(H(3, q^2)\), and \(H(4, q^2)\) is characterized by intersection numbers with planes and solids. This result is then extended to characterize all Hermitian varieties in dimension at least \(4\) by their intersection numbers with planes and solids.