On Automorphisms of Flag Spaces (Q3147573)

Let \((\mathcal P,\mathcal L)\) be a \(3\)-dimensional projective space, \(\mathcal L\) denoting the set of lines. A flag \(\Phi = (p,L,\varepsilon)\) is a triple consisting of a point \(p\), a line \(L\), and a plane \(\varepsilon\), where \(p \in L \subset \varepsilon\). Two flags \(\Phi, \Psi\) are said to be related (\(\Phi \sim \Psi\)) if they differ in at most one of their components. The set \(\mathcal F\) of all flags together with the relation \(\sim\) is the flag space. The authors show that each automorphism (also called Plücker transformation) of \((\mathcal F,\sim)\) is induced by a collineation or a duality of \((\mathcal P,\mathcal L)\). Pencils of flags are the maximal sets of pairwise related flags. The last section, nearly half of the paper, deals with the special case of a space over a commutative field and the flag variety (the image of \(\mathcal F\) under the Segre mapping into a 95-dimensional projective space).