On absolutely universal embeddings (Q1394809)

Given a vector space \(V\) and a point-line geometry \(\Gamma\), a projective embedding \(\varepsilon\colon \Gamma\rightarrow PG(V)\) is an injective mapping from the point-set \(P\) of \(\Gamma\) to the set of points of the projective geometry \( PG(V)\) of linear subspaces of a vector space \(V\), mapping lines of \(\Gamma\) onto lines of \( PG(V)\) and such that \(\varepsilon(P)\) spans \( PG(V)\). Let Emb\((\Gamma)\) be the class of projective embeddings of \(\Gamma\), equipped with a pre-ordering relation \(\geq\), where, for two embeddings \(\varepsilon\colon \Gamma\rightarrow PG(V)\) and \(\eta\colon \Gamma\rightarrow PG(W)\), we write \(\varepsilon\geq \eta\) if \(\varphi\varepsilon = \eta\) for some semilinear mapping \(\varphi\colon V\rightarrow W\). An embedding \(\varepsilon\in \text{Emb}(\Gamma)\) is said to be absolutely universal if \(\varepsilon\geq \eta\) for all \(\eta\in\text{Emb}(\Gamma)\). The line geometries considered in this paper have connected collinearity graph and have precisely \(s+1\) points on every line, where \(s\) is any cardinal number \(\geq 1\) (finite or infinite). \textit{A. Kasikova} and \textit{E. Shult} [J. Algebra 238, 265-291 (2001; Zbl 0988.51001)] have proved an important theorem providing a sufficient criterion for a vast class of point-line geometries to admit the absolutely universal embedding. In this paper the authors provide another sufficient criterion which covers several classes of point-line geometries for which the Kasikova-Shult theorem did not apply, but which do admit the absolutely universal embedding. Combining the two criteria they prove among other applications that certain point-line geometries related to buildings of type \(D_n\) and \(E_n\) admit the absolutely universal embedding.