Stable planes with a point transitive abelian group (Q2455068)

The author studies stable planes of arbitrary positive dimensions \(2l\) which admit a point--transitive action of an abelian group \(\Delta\). Well known examples of this type are the affine translation planes and shift planes (the latter class exists for \(l=1,2\) only). A class of non--affine examples were constructed by \textit{H. Groh} [Abh. Math. Semin. Univ. Hamb. 48, 171--202 (1979; Zbl 0415.51007)], but this construction works for \(l=1\) only. It is not known whether there exists a non--affine plane of the type described above in higher dimensions. Thus, the present paper can be considered as a first step into a systematic search for such examples. The author distinguishes between two types of lines, namely lines \(L\) with trivial stabilizer \(\Delta_L\) (which he calls ``arcs'') and the other ones (the ``straight lines''). Then he proves that a plane cannot contain arcs only, i.e.\ there are straight lines. If every line is straight, then the plane is an affine translation plane and \(\Delta\cong\mathbb R^{2l}\) is the translation group. Moreover, the only affine planes having arcs are the shift planes, whence the affine case is completely checked.