Isotopy and geotopy for ternary rings of projective planes (Q2474489)

The author recalls coordinate descriptions of finite projective planes. Most results in the paper hold true also in the infinite case. Each ternary field defines a projective plane. Conversely, a projective plane and a quadrangle in the plane yield a ternary field. The isomorphism type of the ternary field depends on the choice of the quadrangle. Non-isomorphic ternary fields may produce isomorphic projective planes. The author calls ternary fields geotopic if the assigned projective planes are isomorphic. The notion of geotopy is studied for some classes of ternary fields. Let \(K\) be the ternary field obtained from a projective plane and a quadrangle \((o,e,u,v)\). The point \(e\) controls the isotopism class of \(K\). A quadrangle \((o,e', u,v)\) yields a ternary field isotopic to \(K\), and all ternary fields isotopic to \(K\) arise in this way (up to isomorphism). So, the author studies isotopism classes of ternary fields associated to triangles \((o,u,v)\) in the projective plane and modifications of the triangles. For example, what is the result to the ternary field when replacing \((o,u,v)\) by \((u,o,v)\)? In the particular case of dual translation planes the observations prove that the relation of geotopy for quasifields is generated by two moves, called shift and reflection. The author points out that most results are known in some form and gives new proofs under the assumption of finiteness. For example, a proof to the theorem of Skornjakov and San-Soucie (a projective plane with two distinct translation axes is a Moufang plane) is based on the classification of 2-transitive actions of finite groups. The description of \(+\) in the dual ternary field seems to contain a flaw (Section 4.8).