Sechzehndimensionale lokalkompakte Translationsebenen mit Spin(7) als Kollineationsgruppe. (Sixteen-dimensional locally compact translation planes with Spin(7) as their collineation group) (Q1100439)

The author determines all 16 dimensional locally compact translation planes having a group of affine collineations locally isomorphic to \(SO_ 7({\mathbb{R}})\). This is accomplished by determining the coordinatizing quasifields. Such a quasifield is obtained by modifying the multiplication of the octave algebra \({\mathbb{O}}\) using a homeomorphism \(\rho\) : [0,\(\infty)\to [0,\infty)\) with \(1\rho =1\). The new multiplication is given by the rule: \(a\circ x=0\) if \(a=0\); otherwise, \(a\circ x=a[Re(x)+(| a| \rho)(| a|^{-1})(Pu(x))].\) It is also proven that the full collineation group G of such a plane has three possible structures; in particular, the dimension of G is either 38 or 39.