Grassmann embeddings of polar Grassmannians (Q2010634)

The authors compute the dimension of the (span of the) Grassmann embeddings of polar Grassmannians \(\mathcal{P}_k\) to a Hermitian, alternating or non-degenerate quadratic form \(\eta\). Dimension formulas are give in terms of \(k\), the (finite) dimension \(N\) of the ambient vector space, and the singular defect \(d\) of \(\eta\) and extend hitherto known results for low \(k\) and/or low anisotropic defect \(d_0\) of \(\eta\). In a second part, the authors extend the ``Weyl embedding'' of \textit{I. Cardinali} and \textit{A. Pasini}, J. Algebr. Comb. 38, No. 4, 863-888 (2013; 1297.14053)] for \(k\)-Grassmannians to absolutely non-degenerate quadratic forms with anisotropic defect \(d_0 > 1\). They show that the Grassmann embedding is a quotient of this ``Weyl-like'' embedding and provide (presumably rather lax) bounds for its dimension. Universality questions for the constructed embeddings are an important motivation for this research but, apart from some preliminary thoughts in the introduction, are not pursued any further.