Planar and affine spaces (Q1043647)

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Planar and affine spaces
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    Planar and affine spaces (English)
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    9 December 2009
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    Three-dimensional affine spaces are characterized as the only linear spaces endowed with a set \(\Omega\) of proper subspaces having the following properties: (1) Every line contains a constant number \(n\), \(n>2\), of points. (2) Every triple of noncollinear points is contained in a unique member of \(\Omega\). (3) `Disjoint or coincide' is an equivalence relation in \(\Omega\), and every equivalence class covers all points. The case \(n=2\) (when the structure is a complete graph endowed with a set \(\Omega\) of proper complete subgraphs) is also considered. It turns out that besides the affine 3-space of order 2, only two small additional examples occur. Finally, the authors characterize all finite affine spaces of dimension at least 3 having lines of size at least 3.
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    planar spaces
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    affine spaces
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    linear spaces
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