Parallelisms and translations of (affine) \(\mathrm{SL}(2,q)\)-unitals (Q2051396)

A unital of order \(q\) is a \(2\)-\((q^3+1,q+1,1)\)-design. A lot of distinct (classes of) unitals are known. One particular construction is highly related to the present paper: Take your favourable unital, delete all points of a block, add them in a different but smart way back in, get a new unital. Technically, a block in a unital defines a parallelism in the geometry obtained by deleting all points of the block (which is called an affine unital in the paper under review); if one can find a different parallellism, then one has found a different unital. Moreover, a parallelism only needs the blocks from which a point was deleted (the so-called \textit{short blocks}, in contrast to the other \textit{long blocks}). Hence, one can also try to change the long blocks to obtain a different unital. These games were successfully played by \textit{T. Grundhöfer} et al. [Discrete Math. 339, No. 12, 2987--2993 (2016; Zbl 1357.51001)], starting from a classical unital of order \(4\), that is, the 65 singular points and 208 chords of a non-degenerate Hermitian form in three variables over the finite field \(\mathbb{F}_{16}\), to end up with a unital possessing a block containing all 5 translation points of the unital. An affine classical unital of order \(q\) can be described by the group \(\mathrm{SL}(2,q)\). A formalization of this yields the definition of an affine \(\mathrm{SL}(2,q)\)-unital. In the interesting paper under review, the author constructs two new parallelisms on classes of affine \(\mathrm{SL}(2,q)\)-unitals. She then studies the group of automorphisms of the corresponding unitals. Among other things, she determines all translations. She also specializes to small orders 3, 4, 5, where she knows all \(\mathrm{SL}(2,q)\)-unitals thanks to a computer search.