New results on covers and partial spreads of polar spaces (Q2493440)

The Hermitian surface \(H(3,q^2)\) of \(PG(3,q^2)\) contains \((q^3+1)(q+1)\) lines, which are its generators. A point-set \(\Omega\) of \(H(3,q^2)\) meeting each generator exactly once is called an ovoid. A partial ovoid is a set of points of \(H(3,q^2)\) meeting each generator in at most one point. It is well known that a partial ovoid of cardinality \(q^3+1\) is indeed an ovoid. In the first part of the paper under review it is shown that the maximum cardinality of a partial ovoid of \(H(3,q^2)\) which is not an ovoid is \(q^3-q+1\). The proof of this bound is obtained working in the dual setting, that is considering maximal partial spreads of the elliptic quadric \(Q^-(5,q)\). As shown by \textit{A. Aguglia, G. L. Ebert} and \textit{D. Luyckx} in ``On partial ovoids of Hermitian surfaces'', this bound is actually attained. Next, the authors provide a new proof that a partial spread of \(Q(4,q)\) either is contained in a complete spread (consisting of \(q^2+1\) lines) or contains at most \(q^2-q+1\) lines. Using a similar method, they also improve the lower bound on the size of the smallest blocking set \(B\) of the symplectic polar space \(W(3,q)\) for \(q\) odd, by showing that \(| B| \geq q^2-q-\frac{3}{2}+\frac{\sqrt{8q^2+20q+25}}{2}.\)