Minimal scattered sets and polarized embeddings of dual polar spaces (Q2643839)

In this interesting paper, the authors introduce the notion of a ``scattered set of points'' of a dual polar space as a set \(X\) of points such that every point of the dual polar space is at maximal distance from some point of \(X\). A minimal scattered set is one with the property that, if one removes any point from it, what remains is not a scattered set anymore. The maximum size of a minimal scattered set is called the scattered rank. The main results of the paper under review state that (1) every dual polar space of diameter \(n\) admits a minimal scattered set of size \(2^n\), and (2) if a dual polar space \(\Delta\) admits a polarized lax embedding in some projective space of dimension \(r-1\), then \(r\) is not smaller than the scattered rank of \(\Delta\).