On bijections that preserve complementarity of subspaces (Q2569926)

Let \(V\) (resp. \(V'\)) be a vector space of dimension \(2m\) (resp. \(2m'\)) and let \({\mathcal G}\) (resp. \({\mathcal G}'\)) denote the set of all \(m\)-dimensional (resp. \(m'\)-dimensional) subspaces of \(V\) (resp. \(V'\)). Two elements of \({\mathcal G}\) (resp. \({\mathcal G}'\)) are called adjacent whenever they intersect in an \((m-1)\)-dimensional (resp. \((m'-1)\)-dimensional) subspace. The sets \({\mathcal G}\) and \({\mathcal G}'\) can be endowed with two relations: complementarity and adjacency. The authors prove that if a bijection \(\phi:{\mathcal G} \to {\mathcal G}'\) and its inverse leave one of the relations invariant, then also the other. In the case \(m \geq 2\) such a bijection must be induced by a semi-linear bijection from \(V\) or from the dual of \(V\) onto \(V'\).