On flips of unitary buildings. I: Classification of flips (Q2891072)

The notion of a flip was introduced and used in [\textit{C. D. Bennett} et al., Curtis-Phan-Tits theory. Groups, combinatorics and geometry. Proceedings of the L.M.S. Durham symposium, Durham, UK, 2001. River Edge, NJ: World Scientific (2003; Zbl 1063.20012)] in order to prove theorems similar to the so-called Curtis-Phan-Tits theorem. The general goal is to simplify and understand better the classification of finite simple groups.NEWLINENEWLINEThe paper under review is a step in this program. Here the building \(\Delta\) under consideration is the building associated to a unitary form on some field of cardinality \(q^2\), where \(q\) is a prime power. The authors provide a classification of flips. All of them are induced by a linear or semilinear transformation satisfying some conditions. Then, a flag-transitivity theorem for geometries associated to the flip are derived.