Epimorphisms of generalized polygons. I: Geometrical characterizations (Q5926316)

The article deals with geometric characterisations of epimorphisms \(\alpha : P_m \to P_n \) , where \(P_m\) and \(P_n\) are a thick generalized \(m\)-gon and a thick generalized \(n\)-gon with \(n \neq m\), respectively. First the authors characterize the different possible types of such epimorphisms (Theorem 2.1). Then they give a geometric characterization for each type of epimorphism. As an example of their interesting results we mention the characterization of the epimorphisms \(\alpha : P_m \to P_n \) which are surjective with respect to the point sets, the line sets and the flag sets and bijective with respect to the point rows and the line pencils. These epimorphisms are called of type sssbb by the authors. An epimorphism \(\alpha\) from an \(m\)-gon \(P_m\) onto an \(n\)-gon \(P_n\) of type sssbb exists if and only if a partition of the point and the line set into a distance-\(n\)-ovoid-spread pairing of \(P_m\) exists. In addition the authors list some epimorphisms between well-known \(m\)-gons and \(n\)-gons and provide a geometric proof of a theorem of Bödi and Kramer.