Implicit characterizations of smooth incidence geometries (Q1591214)

The authors study the interplay between smooth manifolds and incidence structures focussing on the role of transversal intersection. They define a smooth generalized plane to be an incidence structure \({\mathbf I}= ({\mathbf P},{\mathbf L},{\mathbf F})\) where for some natural number \(n\) both of \({\mathbf P}\) and \({\mathbf L}\) are \(2n\)-dimensional smooth manifolds, and \({\mathbf F} \subseteq {\mathbf P}\times {\mathbf L}\) is smoothly embedded of dimension \(3n\), such that the canonical projections \({\mathbf F}\to{\mathbf P}\) and \({\mathbf F}\to {\mathbf L}\) are submersions. This definition implies (1.1) that point rows are smoothly embedded \(n\)-manifolds. If two such point rows intersect transversally as submanifolds of \({\mathbf P}\) in some point \(p\), then (1.2) the intersection map is already well defined and smooth in some neighbourhood of the intersecting lines. By definition, a smooth stable plane \(({\mathbf P},{\mathbf L},{\mathbf F})\) contains a quadrangle, has unique and smooth joins for distinct points and smooth intersection on an open subspace of \({\mathbf L}\times{\mathbf L}\), with smooth structures given on \({\mathbf P}\) and \({\mathbf L}\) only. Then the authors study smooth generalized planes where point rows as well as line pencils always intersect tranversally (SGP with TI): They show (1.3) that an SGP with TI and unique joins is already a smooth stable plane; (1.5) if an SGP with TI, compact, connected \({\mathbf P}\) and \({\mathbf L}\), and \({\mathbf F}\) closed in \({\mathbf P}\times {\mathbf L}\) is given, then there exist natural numbers \(k\) and \(m\) such that any two distinct points are joined by exactly \(k\) lines and any two distinct lines intersect in exactly \(m\) points. It remains open whether \(k,m>1\) may occur. An affine translation plane \({\mathbf A}\) with point set \(\mathbb{R}^{2n}\) is smooth iff (2.1) the spread \({\mathbf S}\) defining \({\mathbf A}\) is a submanifold of the Grassmann manifold \({\mathbf G}\) of \(n\)-dimensional vector subspaces which for any \(0\neq s\in\mathbb{R}^{2n}\) intersects transversally the submanifold \({\mathbf G}_s:= \{L\in{\mathbf G}\mid s\in L\}\). (3.1)--(3.4) reveals some of the impact of transversal intersection in the domain of Möbius planes.