A uniform characterisation of the varieties of the second row of the Freudenthal-Tits magic square over arbitrary fields (Q6060948)

In this paper, the authors characterise the projective varieties related to the second row of the Freudenthal-Tits magic square (see [\textit{J. Tits}, Indag. Math. 28, 223--237 (1966; Zbl 0139.03204)]), for both the split and the non-split form, using a common and simple geometric axiom system. A special case of their result simultaneously captures the analogues over arbitrary fields of the Severi varieties (comprising the 27-dimensional \(\mathsf{E}_{6}\) module and some of its subvarieties), as well as the Veronese representations of projective planes over composition division algebras (most notably the Cayley plane). The results obtained in this work can be considered as the culmination of almost four decades of work since the original result of \textit{F. Mazzocca} and \textit{N. Melone} in [Discrete Math. 48, 243--252 (1984; Zbl 0537.51014)] in which there is characterized the quadric Veronese variety over a finite field of odd order. The latter result is a finite counterpart to the characterisation of the complex quadric Veronese surface by \textit{F. Severi} [Rend. Sem. Palermo 15, 33--51 (1901; JFM 32.0648.04)].