A geometric description of the spin-embedding of symplectic dual polar spaces of rank 3 (Q941317)

With a nondegenerate alternating bilinear form of a 6-dimensional vector space over the finite field with \(2^r\) elements, there is associated a polar space \(W(5,2^r)\) and a dual polar space \(DW(5,2^r)\). The dual polar space \(DW(5,2^r)\) has a natural projective embedding \(e\) into \(PG(13,2^r)\), the so-called Grassmann embedding of \(DW(5,2^r)\). There exists a 5-dimensional subspace \(N\) of \(PG(13,2^r)\) such that there exists a quotient embedding \(e/N\) which isomorphic to the so-called spin-embedding of \(DW(5,2^r)\). If \(Q\) is a quad of \(DW(5,2^r)\), then \(e\) induces an embedding \(e_Q\) of \(Q\) into a 4-dimensional subspace \(\Sigma_Q\) which is isomorphic to the natural embedding of the generalized quadrangle \(Q(4,q)\) into \(PG(4,q)\). Let \(n_Q\) denote the nucleus of the nonsingular parabolic quadric \(e_Q(Q)\) of \(\Sigma_Q\). The authors prove the following: (1) \(N\) is generated by the points \(n_Q\), where \(Q\) is a quad of \(DW(5,2^r)\); (2) The map \(Q \mapsto n_Q\) defines an embedding of the polar space \(W(5,2^r)\) into \(N\) (the natural embedding of \(W(5,2^r)\)). The results of the paper under review were later generalized in [\textit{R. J. Blok, I. Cardinali} and \textit{B. De Bruyn}, Eur. J. Comb. 30, 468--472 (2009; Zbl 1159.51003)] to symplectic polar spaces of arbitrary ranks over arbitrary fields of characteristic 2.