On automorphism groups of toroidal circle planes (Q1754400)

The authors define a toroidal circle plane as a geometry \(\mathbb{T}=(\mathcal{P},\mathcal{C},{\mathcal{G}}^{+},{\mathcal{G}}^{-})\) whose point set \(\mathcal{P}\) is the torus \(\mathbb{S}^{1} \times \mathbb{S}^{1}\), circles (elements of \(\mathcal{C}\)) are graphs of homeomorphisms of \(\mathbb{S}^{1}\), \((+)\)-parallel classes (elements of \({\mathcal{G}}^{+}\)) are the verticals \(\{x_{0}\} \times \mathbb{S}^{1} \) and \((-)\)--parallel classes (elements of \({\mathcal{G}}^{-}\)) are the horizontals \(\mathbb{S}^{1} \times \{y_{0}\}\) where \(x_0, y_0 \in \mathbb{S}^{1}\), and satisfying the axiom of joining (three pairwise non-parallel points can be joined by a unique circle). A toroidal circle plane is called a flat Minkowski plane if it also satisfies the axiom of touching (for each circle \(C\) and any two nonparallel points \(p\), \(q\) with \(p \in C\) and \(q \not\in C\), there is exactly one circle \(D\) that contains both points \(p\), \(q\) and intersects \(C\) only at the point \(p\)). The main result of the paper under review is: w.r.t. the compact-open topology, the automorphism group of a toroidal circle plane is a Lie group of dimension at most 6 (generalizing a result proved earlier by \textit{A. Schenkel} [Topologische Minkowski-Ebenen. Erlangen: Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (Diss.) (1980)] for flat Minkowski planes). Another theorem concerns toroidal circle planes with a large automorphism group (dim \(\geq 4\) or one of its kernels is 3-dimensional). These turn out to be flat Minkowski planes.