Subplanes of order 3 in Hughes planes (Q625360)

The authors prove the existence of subplanes of order 3 in Hughes planes of order \(q^{2}\), where \(q\equiv5 \pmod 6\). The construction is based on the Dickson nearfield of order \(q^{2}\) over the field of order \(q\). In both cases \(q\equiv5 \pmod{12}\) and \(q\equiv11 \pmod{12}\) points and lines are explicitly given. In a final section the existence of partial linear spaces not embeddable into any Hughes plane is shown. To achieve this colorings of incidence graphes are used.