On the intersection pattern of a unital and an oval in \(PG(2,q^{2})\) (Q1046472)

The starting point of the present article is \textit{B. Segre}'s result on permutable polarities of \(\text{PG}(2,q^2)\) [Ann. Mat. Pura Appl., IV. Ser. 70, 70--87 (1965; Zbl 0146.16703)]. Let \(\Omega\) be a classical oval, the set of all points of an irreducible conic \(C\) (equivalently, the set of all absolute points of a non-degenerate orthogonal polarity \(\pi\)) and \({\mathcal U}\) a Hermitian unital, the set of all points of non-degenerate Hermitian curve \({\mathcal H}\) (equivalently, the set of all absolute points of a non-degenerate unitary polarity \(\omega\)). The authors give a complete classification of the intersection pattern of classical oval and a (non-degenerate) Hermitian unital in \(\text{PG}(2,q^2)\) with \(q> 3\). They use a different approach depending on the theory of plane cubic curves over a finite field including the Hasse's bound on the number of points that a non-singular plane cubic curve may have over a finite field.