Clifford parallelisms and external planes to the Klein quadric (Q506929)

Let \((\mathcal{P},\mathcal{L})\) be a projective space with point set \(\mathcal{P}\) and line set \(\mathcal{L}\). An equivalence relation on the line set \(\mathcal{L}\) is a \textit{parallelism} if each point \(p\in \mathcal{P}\) is incident with precisely one line from each equivalence class. The equivalence classes of a parallelism are also called \textit{parallel classes}. In the literature, the theory of \textit{Clifford parallelisms} has been developed. This theory is built up from two parallelisms, therefore the name \textit{double space}. This article aims at giving characterisations of a \textit{single } Clifford parallelism in the three-dimensional projective space. The results of the author lead to a one-to-one correspondence between Clifford parallelisms and planes that are external to the Klein quadric in 5-dimensional space. The author also gives two characterisations of a Clifford parallelism. The first characterisation of Theorem 6.2 characterises a parallelism as being Clifford via the property that any two distinct parallel classes are contained in a geometric hyperplane of the Grassmann space formed by the lines of \(\mathbb{P}(V)\). The second characterisation of Theorem 6.3 makes use of a criterion, called the \textit{condition of crossed pencils}.