On groups of Baer collineations acting on cartesian and translation planes (Q791147)

The author defines a B-group of a finite projective plane to be a group G such that every non-trivial element is a Baer collineation whose order is prime to the order of the plane. In general the various elements of a B- group need not fix the same Baer subplane pointwise; it is not even known whether there is some subplane pointwise fixed by all elements of G (i.e. wether or not G is planar). The main result of this paper is the following theorem: Let \(\Pi\) be a translation plane of order n admitting a B-group G. Then G is planar, \(\Pi_ G\) is a subplane of order \(n^ e\) for some e and one of the following holds (a) G is cyclic and \(e=1/2\) (i.e. \(\Pi_ G\) is a Baer subplane), (b) G is an elementary abelian 2-group and \(e=| G|^{-1}\), (c) \(G\subseteq S_ 5\) or G is dihedral; in both cases \(e=1/4\). The author makes considerable use of groups whose Sylow subgroups are all cyclic (Z-groups) and of Wielandt polynomials. Actually, much of the paper uses only the weaker assumption that \(\Pi\) is a cartesian plane instead of the assumption that \(\Pi\) is a translation plane.