Symmetries of BLT-sets (Q1404311)

This paper initiates the study of BLT-sets as objects in their own right (a BLT-set in a thick generalized quadrangle being a nonempty set of points meeting every line in 0 or 2 points; it has automatically as many points as there are on a line of the quadrangle). Usually BLT-sets appear along with a flock of a cone and their properties are studied with respect to the corresponding generalized quadrangles they define. In the present paper, the authors study symmetries of BLT-sets, almost always in the classical quadrangle \(Q(4,q)\). In particular, they consider collineations fixing all points on a certain line, and these seem to behave really nice when stabilizing a BLT-set. Several rather easy properties are proved, necessary to start to develop a theory. The main observation of the paper is that the main result of a submitted paper of Bader, O'Keefe and Penttila can be translated into the language of hyperbolic reflections, which are specific collineations of the type described above.