Bounded distance preserving surjections in the projective geometry of matrices (Q2431181)

Let \((D, \bar{\;})\) be a division ring with involution \(\bar{\;}:D\to D\) and let \({\mathcal P}H_n(D)\) be the projective space of Hermitian matrices, that is, the set of all \(n\)-dimensional subspaces \(W\subseteq D^{2n}=D^n\times D^n\) which satisfy \(x\bar{v}^{tr}-y\bar{u}^{{tr}}=0\) for row vectors \((x,y),(u,v)\in W\). The space \({\mathcal P}H_n(D)\) comes equipped with a natural arithmetic distance \(d(W_1,W_2):=\dim(W_1+W_2)-n\), and two points are called adjacent if their distance is one. The author proves that if \(\Phi\) is a surjection between two projective spaces of Hermitian matrices and maps \(k\)-balls onto \(k\)-balls, for some fixed \(k\) smaller than the maximal arithmetic distance, then \(\Phi\) is a bijection which preserves adjacency in both directions. This also covers the projective space of symmetric matrices as a subcase when the involution is the identity and the division ring is commutative as long as its characteristic differs from two. A complete description of such maps, under certain conditions on \((D, \bar{\;})\), then follows from well-known results obtained earlier by different authors. The main idea of the proof is to regard \({\mathcal P}H_n(D)\) as a simple graph whose vertices consists of points in \({\mathcal P}H_n(D)\) and where two vertices \(W_1,W_2\in {\mathcal P}H_n(D)\) are connected if they are adjacent. It is then shown that this graph satisfies five conditions which are mostly too technical to be given here. After this is verified, the main result then follows by an earlier work of the same author [\textit{W.-L. Huang}, Linear Algebra Appl. 433, 1973--1987 (2010; Zbl 1229.15021)], extending the main two lemmas of \textit{M.H. Lim} and \textit{J. J.-H. Tan} [Linear Algebra Appl. 430, No.~1, 564--573 (2009; Zbl 1161.15002)]. The corresponding graph of the projective space of alternate matrices is bipartite and hence does not satisfy all five conditions. Instead, it is shown that the above five conditions are satisfied when restricted to the irreducible space of the projective space of alternate matrices, that is, to the subset of all points at even distance to each other, and the corresponding induced subgraph is equipped with half the arithmetic distance.