4-dimensional elation Laguerre planes admitting non-solvable automorphism groups (Q1849368)

It follows from results on topological ovals in compact projective planes that locally compact connected Laguerre planes can only exist in topological dimensions 2 and 4 (perhaps also \(\infty\)). In his habilitation thesis (Kiel, 1987), the author has given the first 4-dimensional examples other than the complex plane, he characterized the complex plane by the existence of an at least 11-dimensional group of automorphisms, and he classified all planes with an at least 10-dimensional group. The present paper continues a sequence of articles [Forum Math. 2, 233-247 (1990; Zbl 0696.51008), Monatsh. Math. 111, No. 3, 207-231 (1991; Zbl 0746.51008), and Forum Math. 11, 79-103 (1999; Zbl 0927.51025)] presenting those results, and completes the classification in the case where the automorphism group is not solvable. In what follows, all planes are assumed to be 4-dimensional. The planes treated in the present article belong to the class of elation Laguerre planes, characterized by the existence of a group which fixes all parallel classes and acts sharply transitively on the set of circles. Such a group is necessarily abelian and, in fact, isomorphic to \(\mathbb{R}^6\). The Lie geometry [\textit{A. E. Schroth}, Topological circle planes and topological quadrangles, Pitman Research Notes 337, Longman (1995; Zbl 0839.51013)] of an elation Laguerre plane is an elation generalized quadrangle. Among the elation Laguerre planes, the `classical' complex plane is the only one with a point transitive group. The only non-classical elation Laguerre planes admitting a (center-free) simple Lie group of automorphisms (namely, \(\text{PSL}_2\mathbb{R}\)) are the semiclassical planes obtained by the author by glueing two halves of the complex plane in some skew manner. The only other possibility for a non-simple automorphism group of a non-classical elation Laguerre plane is treated in the present paper. It is characterized by the existence of a group \(\text{SL}_2\mathbb{R}\) of automorphisms, which necessarily acts on the normal elation group \(\mathbb{R}^6\) by the unique irreducible representation. Thus the automorphism group is completely determined, and there is precisely one plane compatible with this group. It is a non-trivial task to describe the plane in terms of its elation group and to prove its existence (including the continuity properties). The author does this using the method developed in his habilitation thesis, encoding the information about the plane in a function from the 2-sphere to the space of \((6\times 2)\)-matrices. This method was later interpreted by the reviewer [\textit{R. Löwen}, Math. Z. 216, 347-369 (1994; Zbl 0806.51009)] in terms of pseudo-ovals, a topological counterpart (in the abelian case) of the Kantor families introduced later by \textit{L. Bader} and \textit{S. E. Payne} [J. Geom. 63, No. 1-2, 1-16 (1998; Zbl 0934.51003)] for the description of infinite elation generalized quadrangles. In each of these versions, the description method allows one to draw on the well-developed theory of topological translation planes, since all derived affine planes of an elation Laguerre plane are dual translation planes, which are accessible from the data describing the Laguerre plane. The author points out how some proofs in his paper can be abbreviated by using results of the reviewer (at the cost of losing the explicit description of tangent circles).