Alternating forms and transitive locally grid geometries (Q881815)

The author deals with the attenuated and Pfaffian geometric hyperplanes. The main results of the present article are the following two theorems and their corollaries: Theorem 1. Let \(V\) be a vector space over \(K\) and \(s: V\times V\to K\) be a symplectic form on \(V\). Let \({\mathcal H}={\mathcal H}_{s,d}\) be set of all \(d\)-subspaces \(P\) of \(V\) for which \(s\setminus p\) is degenerate. Assume additionally that \(d\) is even with \(0< d\leq\text{rank}(V, s)\), so that \({\mathcal H}\) does not consist of all \(d\)-subspaces of \(V\). Then \({\mathcal H}\) is a geometric hyperplane of \(A_d(V)= ({\mathcal P}_d(V),{\mathcal L}_d(V))\), and the associated affine Grassmannian \({\mathcal G}_d(V)_{{\mathcal H}}\) is connected and transitive. Indeed \({\mathcal G}_d(V)_{{\mathcal H}}\) is flag-transitive if and only if either (a) \(s\) is nondegenerate or (b) \(d= \text{rank}(V, s)\). Theorem 2. Let \({\mathcal H}\) be a geometric hyperplane of \({\mathcal A}_d(V)\) with \(V= \mathbb{F}^n_q\). Then \({\mathcal G}_d(V)_{{\mathcal H}}\) is flag transitive if and only if we have one of (a) \({\mathcal H}={\mathcal H}_R\), an attenuated hyperplane with respect to some \(R\) of codimension \(d\) in \(V\); (b) \(d\) is even and \({\mathcal H}={\mathcal H}_{s,d}\) for some degenerate symplectic \(s\) form on \(V\).