On Veldkamp lines (Q1280221)

The Veldkamp space of a point-line geometry \(\Gamma=({\mathcal P},{\mathcal L})\) with point set \({\mathcal P}\) and line set \({\mathcal L}\) consists of all geometric hyperplanes of \(\Gamma\) as new set of points and the collection of all of pairs of distinct hyperplanes as new set of lines. This is a linear space if Veldkamp lines exist, that is, no hyperplane is properly contained in any other hyperplane and \(A\cap B\subseteq C\) for any three distinct hyperplanes \(A\), \(B\) and \(C\) implies \(A\cap B=A\cap C\). The author shows that Veldkamp lines exist for a class of strong parapolar spaces comprising the Grassmann spaces \(A_{n,d}(D)\) over a division ring \(D\), the half-spin geometries of type \(D_{n,n}(F)\) and the Lie incidence geometries of type \(E_{6,1}(F)\) or \(E_{7,1}(F)\) over a field \(F\) and thus that the associated Veldkamp spaces except possibly \(E_{7,1}(F)\) are projective spaces. Using ideas from the dependence theory of partial matroids the author says that Veldkamp \((r-1)\)-spaces exist if the \(r\)-fold intesection property is satisfied, that is, for each positive integer \(s\leq r\) and hyperplanes \(A,A_1,\ldots, A_s\) of \(\Gamma\) such that \(A_1\cap\ldots\cap A_s\subseteq A\) one either has \(A_1\cap\ldots\cap A_{s-1}\subseteq A\) or \(A_1\cap\ldots\cap A_{s-1}\cap A=A_1\cap\ldots\cap A_s\). This condition naturally generalises the ones for the existence of Veldkamp lines (\(r=2\)) or Veldkamp planes (\(r=3\)). The author shows that if the collinearity graph of \((A_1\cap\ldots\cap A_{s-1})\setminus(A_1\cap\ldots\cap A_s)\) is connected for all hyperplanes \(A_1,\ldots, A_s\) of \(\Gamma\) and \(s\leq r\), then Veldkamp \((r-1)\)-spaces exist. This last property is verified for polar spaces of reduced rank \(r+1\) and certain strong parapolar spaces for \(r=2\) so that Veldkamp \((r-1)\)-spaces and Veldkamp lines exist for the respective geometries. Finally, if Veldkamp lines exist in a point-line geometry \(\Gamma\) and if there is some projective embedding \(e:{\mathcal P}\to {\mathbb P}\) of \(\Gamma\) such that every geometric hyperplane of \(\Gamma\) arises from \(e\), that is, each hyperplane \(H\) is of the form \(H=e^{-1}(H')\) for a hyperplane \(H'\) of the projective space \({\mathbb P}\), then the Veldkamp space of \(\Gamma\) is a projective space. The existence of such embeddings was established for the above mentioned geometries in a series of papers by the author.