Smooth stable planes (Q1359354)

Locally compact topological projective, affine or stable planes have been widely studied over the past 40 years. An excellent introduction into and overview of this area is given in \textit{H. Salzmann} et al. [Compact Projective Planes, De Gruyter Expositions in Mathematics 21, Berlin (1996; Zbl 0851.51003)]. In contrast to the vast amount of knowledge about topological planes only a few results are known if one imposes even stronger differentiability conditions. The investigation of differentiable projective planes goes back to S. \textit{Breitsprecher} [Math. Z. 99, 429-432 (1967; Zbl 0147.38901) and Math. Z. 121, 157-174 (1971; Zbl 0229.50021)] who proved that a holomorphic projective plane is isomorphic to the complex projective plane with its standard analytic structure. \textit{L. Kramer} [Arch. Math. 63, No. 1, 85-91 (1994; Zbl 0831.51011)] showed that the point space and line space of a smooth projective plane is homeomorphic to the point space of the corresponding classical projective plane. Other differentiability conditions for projective or affine planes have been investigated by \textit{J. Otte} [``Differenzierbare Ebenen'', Dissertation, Kiel (1993; Zbl 0837.51004)]; in particular, he constructed many examples of smooth affine translation planes. However, only the classical projective planes over the real division algebras are smooth projective translation planes. In the note under review, which is the first in a series of papers on smooth geometries, the author investigates stable planes \({\mathcal S}=(P,{\mathcal L},{\mathcal F})\) where the point set \(P\) and the line set \({\mathcal L}\) are smooth, i.e., infinitely differentiable, manifolds such that the join and intersection maps are smooth on their respective domains of definition. Basic definitions and results about the underlying topology and tangent structure are given in preparation of a systematic study of smooth planes. Note that unlike S. Breitsprecher the author does not postulate that lines and line pencils are submanifolds of \(P\) and \({\mathcal L}\), respectively. In fact, this follows. Furthermore, the flag space \({\mathcal F}\) is a closed submanifold of the product manifold \(P\times{\mathcal L}\) and the differentiable structures on \(P\) and \({\mathcal L}\) are uniquely determined by the manifold structure of one single line pencil. Using methods from the theory of fibre bundles the author shows that the tangent space at each point of a smooth stable plane naturally carries the structure of a locally compact topological affine translation plane. More precisely, the tangent translation plane \({\mathcal A}_p\) of \({\mathcal S}\) at the point \(p\) has the tangent space \(T_pP\) of the manifold \(P\) at \(p\) as point set and the collection of all tangent spaces \(T_pL\) of lines \(L\) through \(p\) as a spread. In fact, \({\mathcal A}_p\) is a linearization of \({\mathcal S}\) at \(p\), that is, there is an open neighbourhoud \(U\) of \(p\) in \(P\) and a homeomorphism \(\lambda:U\to T_pP\) such that \(\lambda(L\cap U)=T_pL\) for every line \(L\) through \(p\). Moreover, the restriction of \(\lambda\) to \(U\setminus\{p\}\) is smooth. Given the well developed theory of translation planes, this linearization result is one of the most important tools in the further investigation of smooth stable planes. The above construction can be dualized to some extent. For each line \(L\) the collection \({\mathcal S}_L\) of all tangent spaces \(T_L{\mathcal L}_p\) of line pencils \({\mathcal L}_p\) for \(p\in L\) defines a partial spread of the tangent space \(T_L{\mathcal L}\) of the manifold \({\mathcal L}\) at \(L\). Furthermore, \({\mathcal S}_L\) is an \(l\)-dimensional submanifold of the Grassmannian manifold of all \(l\)-dimensional subspaces of the \(2l\)-dimensional space \(T_L{\mathcal L}\). Following \textit{H. Löwe} [Geom. Dedicata 52, No. 1, 87-104 (1994; Zbl 0813.51010)] a shear plane can be constructed out of such a partial spread. The author shows that there is an open neighbourhoud \({\mathcal U}\) of \(L\) in \({\mathcal L}\) and a smooth topological embedding \(\lambda':{\mathcal U}\setminus\{L\}\to T_L{\mathcal L}\setminus\{0\}\) such that \(\lambda'({\mathcal L}_p\cap {\mathcal U}\setminus\{L\})=T_L{\mathcal L}_p\setminus\{0\}\) for every point \(p\in L\).