Regular parallelisms on \(\mathrm{PG}(3,\mathbb{R})\) admitting a \(2\)-torus action (Q2078113)

In the real projective space \(\mathrm{PG}(3,\mathbb{R})\), a \textit{spread} is a set of mutually disjoint lines covering the point-set and a \textit{parallelism} is a set of mutually disjoint spreads covering the whole line-set. The paper in review deals with \textit{topological} parallelisms, namely parallelisms such that the unique line parallel to a given line \(L\) and passing through a given point \(p\) depends continuously on the pair \((p,L)\), and continues a series of papers by the first author on parallelisms with large groups. It is known [\textit{D. Betten} and \textit{R. Löwen}, Result. Math. 72, No. 1--2, 1021--1030 (2017; Zbl 1379.51003); \textit{R. Löwen}, Bull. Belg. Math. Soc. - Simon Stevin 25, No. 4, 629--640 (2018; Zbl 1436.51011)] that the automorphism group of a topological parallelism is a compact Lie group of dimension at most 6. There exist many examples of parallelisms with an automorphism group of dimension at most 1, while it has been proved that if the group has dimension at least 4, then the parallelism is Clifford [\textit{R. Löwen}, Innov. Incidence Geom. 17, No. 1, 43--46 (2019; Zbl 1406.51010)]. Parallelisms with a 3 dimensional automorphism group are completely known [\textit{R. Löwen}, Beitr. Algebra Geom. 60, No. 2, 333--337 (2019; Zbl 1417.51013)]. The problem for parallelisms with a group of dimension 2 seems very difficult, thus the authors choose to tackle it starting requiring an additional property, namely the regularity: a parallelism is said to be \textit{regular} if each of its spreads is regular, thus together with any triple of distinct lines, contains the entire regulus determined by this triple. Among the results in the paper, the authors can prove that: Theorem 2.1. A regular parallelism with an automorphism group of dimension at least \(3\) is Clifford. The main result of the paper, that closes an open question asked in [\textit{D. Betten} and \textit{R. Riesinger}, Result. Math. 66, No. 3--4, 291--326 (2014; Zbl 1316.51001)], is the following: Theorem 1.1. A regular topological parallelism with a \(2\)-dimensional automorphism group is at most 3-dimensional. The only 2-dimensional compact connected Lie group is the 2-torus and examples of regular parallelisms with 2-torus action are known only in very special cases. The authors provide simplified treatment of these examples and their properties and new general existence results. In particular, they show that if a 2-torus acts on the parallelism, then the parallelism can be described using a so-called \textit{generalized line star} which admits a 1-torus action.