No label defined (Q4028451)

[For the entire collection see Zbl 0748.00018.] The author shows that there are precisely (up to isomorphism) four translation planes of order 27 which have a translation complement of order divisible by 7. They are the desarguesian plane, Hering's plane, the flag-transitive plane found by \textit{M. L. Narayana Rao} and \textit{K. Kuppuswamy Rao} [Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 59, 337-345 (1976; Zbl 0337.50010)] and the flag-transitive plane found by \textit{M. L. Narayana Rao}, \textit{K. Kuppuswamy Rao} and \textit{K. Satyanarayana} [Houston J. Math. 10, 127-145 (1984; Zbl 0534.51004)]. Since Hering's plane is doubly transitive on its points, all four of these planes are flag-transitive. Moreover, a simple counting argument shows that any flag-transitive plane of order 27 must have translation complement of order divisible by 7 and hence be one of these (using Wagner's result that all finite flag-transitive planes are translation planes). The model used is based on treating the finite field \(GF(3^ 6)\) as a 6- dimensional vector space \(V\) over \(GF(3)\). Since \(GL(6,3)\) has a Sylow 7- subgroup of order 7, it suffices to look for spreads of \(V\) that are invariant under the subgroup \(\langle\beta^{52}\rangle\), where \(\beta\) is a primitive element of \(GF(3^ 6)\). A computer search finishes the job.