Area functions on affine planes (Q506951)

Oriented area functions are functions defined on the set of ordered triangles of an affine plane which are antisymmetric under odd permutations of the vertices and which behave additively when triangles are cut into two. The authors show that three natural properties which area functions may have are essentially equivalent, and they determine all oriented area functions satisfying these properties. It turns out that area functions of this type only exist in Pappian planes and can be obtained from the usual area function by composition with a monomorphism.