Locally polar geometries with affine planes (Q1185867)

Several authors (Veldkamp, Tits, Buekenhout, Shult, P. Johnson, Pasini, Cuypers among others) have studied geometries on the absolute points of polarities in projective spaces. Particularly, the authors of this article have given many important results on this topic at present [see the first author, Geom. Dedicata 34, 67-87 (1990), \textit{E. E. Shult}, Geom. Dedicata 34, No. 1, 89-99 (1990) and Geom. Dedicata 34, No. 1, 35- 56 (1990; Zbl 0699.51004) and Bull. Soc. Math. Belg., Ser. A 42, No. 3, 643-659 (1990; Zbl 0729.51006). The authors consider partial linear spaces containing a set of subspaces isomorphic to affine planes, such that the lines and these affine planes on a fixed point form a non-degenerate polar space of rank at least 2. They give some definitions, in particular the synthetic definition of tangent geometries, discuss the relation between tangent geometries and affine polar spaces and prove some important theorems. Besides this they extend some results of Cohen and Shult [\textit{A. M. Cohen} and \textit{E. E. Shult}, Geom. Dedicata 35, No. 1-3, 43-76 (1990)]. In particular they show that the transitive extension of the relation of being parallel in some affine plane induces a non-trivial equivalence relation on the set of lines of tangent geometry \(\Gamma\) of a polar space \(\Pi\).