A criterion for stability of planes (Q1074865)

A stable plane (M,\({\mathcal L})\) consists of a topological space M and a system \({\mathcal L}\) of subsets of M (the lines) such that (a) every pair of points \(x\neq y\in M\) is joined by a unique line \(x\vee y\in {\mathcal L}\), (b) for a suitable (unique) topology on \({\mathcal L}\) the operation \(\vee\) is continuous, (c) the dual operation \(\wedge\) of intersection of lines is stable, i.e. \(\wedge\) is continuous and its domain of definition is open. In all known examples of stable planes with locally compact connected point set M is a second countable topological 2n-dimensional manifold, and lines are closed n-dimensional submanifolds. In this situation the author shows that the stability condition (c) in the definition of a stable plane can be replaced by checking a much simpler transversality condition, provided continuity of \(\vee\) has been proved with respect to the disc topology on \({\mathcal L}\) (two lines are close to each other if they admit embeddings of the n-dimensional closed disc which are close to each other in the topology of uniform convergence). This condition says that if two lines K,L\(\in {\mathcal L}\) intersect in a point \(p\in M\) then there is a neighbourhood U of p and a homeomorphism \(\phi\) : \(U\to {\mathbb{R}}^{2n}\) which sends \(K\cap U\) and \(L\cap U\) onto the factors \({\mathbb{R}}^ n\times 0\) and \(0\times {\mathbb{R}}^ n\), respectively. In the case that M carries a smooth structure it is sufficient for (c) that lines are pairwise transversal smooth submanifolds of M. This beautiful result will help to save considerable work in the construction of examples of stable planes. Note that the proof does not use the geometric structure of M, thus extending a well-known result for submanifolds of compact manifolds.