Unipotent representations of Lie incidence geometries (Q2256992)

In [J. Algebr. Comb. 18, No. 3, 211--243 (2003; Zbl 1041.51006)], the author outlined a general theory of embeddings for certain geometries into groups and expansions of such geometries to a group via an embedding. In particular, he dealt with the hulls of certain embeddings of projective spaces, polar spaces, Grassmannians of projective spaces, dual polar spaces and half-spin geometries. In the paper under review, the author takes up these investigations. If \(\Gamma\) is the residue of a flag \(A\) in the \(J\)-shadow geometry of a spherical building \(\Delta\) of rank \(n\geq3\) where \(J\) is the type of \(A\), then unipotent representations are considered, that is, embeddings of \(\Gamma\) into the unipotent radical of the stabilizer of a flag opposite to \(A\) in the group of all type-preserving automorphisms of \(\Delta\). It is shown that quadratic Veronesean embeddings and Hermitian Veronesean embeddings of projective spaces are unipotent representations. The main purpose of the paper is the examination of two cases that have not been dealt with in the author's earlier paper. These are the 27-dimensional projective embedding of \(E_{6,1}(\mathbb{F})\) and the 56-dimensional projective embedding of \(E_{7,7}(p)\), both of which are linearly dominant. For both embeddings descriptions of their hulls as unipotent representations are obtained. As a corollary it is moreover shown that the subgeometry of \(E_7(\mathbb{F})\) far from a 7-element and the subgeometry of \(E_8(p)\) far from an 8-element are simply connected.