A characterization of jointless Dowling geometries (Q1292874)

The author uses statistics of flats of small rank in order to characterize the jointless Dowling geometries defined by groups of order exceeding three and having rank greater than 3. In particular, it is shown that if the Tutte polynomial of a matroid is identical to the Tutte polynomial of a jointless Dowling geometry, then the matroid is indeed a Dowling geometry. For rank 3 (and groups of order exceeding 3) this holds only if the order of the groups is even.