Geometric characterisation of subvarieties of \(\mathcal{E}_6(\mathbb{K})\) related to the ternions and sextonions (Q2684907)

The Freudenthal-Tits magic square [\textit{J. Tits}, Acad. Roy. Belgique, Cl. Sci., Mém., Coll. 8\(^\circ\) 29, No. 3 (1955; Zbl 0067.12301)] is a four by four array whose rows and columns are indexed by a pair of composition algebras. Its entries, in the context of this paper, are projective varieties (more specifically, projective planes over rings or their Veronese representations). In [\textit{A. De Schepper} et al., ``A uniform characterisation of the varieties of the second row of the Freudenthal-Tits Magic Square over arbitrary fields'', Preprint, \url{https://cage.ugent.be/ads/links/8.pdf}] the authors characterized the Veronese representations of the varieties of the second row in a Freudenthal-Tits magic square by a remarkably simple set of three axioms involving a point set \(X\) in the projective space \(\subset \mathbb{P}^N(\mathbb{K})\) of dimension \(N \in \mathbb{N} \cup \{\infty\}\) over an arbitrary field \(\mathbb{K}\) and a family \(\Xi\) of subspaces of \(\mathbb{P}^N(\mathbb{K})\). The purpose of this paper is an extension of this geometric interpretation to ``degenerate'' algebras \(\mathbb{A} \oplus t\mathbb{A}\) where \(\mathbb{A}\) is an associative non-division composition algebra over \(\mathbb{K}\) and \(t^2 = 0\). The systems of three axioms is adapted and now requires two sets of points \(X\), \(Z\) and two sets of subspaces \(\Xi\), \(\Theta\). The previous case is obtained for \(\Theta = \varnothing\). Otherwise, the respective entries of the Freudenthal-Tits magic square are -- up to projectivity and projection from a subspace contained in each member of \(\Xi \cup \Theta\) -- subvarieties of the Cartan variety \(\mathcal{E}_6(\mathbb{K})\). The respective algebras for the first three entries are the ternions, \((\mathbb{K} \times \mathbb{K}) + t(\mathbb{K} \times \mathbb{K})\), and the sextonions. The fourth entry has a slightly special behavior.