We consider any classical Grassmannian geometry $Γ$; that is, any projective or polar Grassmann space. Suppose every line in $Γ$ contains $s+1$ points. Then we classify all sets of points in $Γ$ of cardinality $s+1$, with the property, that no object of opposite type in the corresponding building, is opposite every point of the set. It turns out that such sets are either lines, or hyperbolic lines in symplectic residues, or ovoids in large symplectic subquadrangles of rank 2 residues in characteristic 2. This is a far-reaching extension of a famous and fundamental result of Bose & Burton from the 1960s. We describe a new way to classify geometric lines in finite classical geometries and how our results correspond to blocking sets.
A lattice L is "meet-distributive" if for each element of L, the meets of the elements directly below it form a Boolean lattice. These objects are in bijection with "convex geometries", which are an abstract model of convexity. Do they give rise to an incidence Hopf algebra of convex geometries?
A graph ${\mathcal G}$ is locally X if the graphs induced on the neighbours of every vertex of ${\mathcal G}$ are isomorphic to the graph $X$. We prove that the infinite family of incidence graphs of the $r$-rank incidence geometries, $Γ(KG(n,k),r)$, constructed using the Kneser graphs $KG(n,k)$, are locally $X$ with $X$ being the incidence graphs of the rank $r-1$ residues of $Γ(KG(n,k),r)$.
We develop a theory for quotients of geometries and obtain sufficient conditions for the quotient of a geometry to be a geometry. These conditions are compared with earlier work on quotients, in particular by Pasini and Tits. We also explore geometric properties such as connectivity, firmness and transitivity conditions to determine when they are preserved under the quotienting operation. We show that the class of coset pregeometries, which contains all flag-transitive geometries, is closed under an appropriate quotienting operation.
The {\it linear representation} of a subset of a finite projective space is an incidence system of affine points and lines determined by the subset. In this paper we use character theory to show that the rank of the incidence matrix has a direct geometric interpretation in terms of certain hyperplanes. We consider the LDPC codes defined by taking the incidence matrix and its transpose as parity-check matrices, and in the former case prove a conjecture of Vandendriessche that the code is generated by words of minimum weight called plane words. In the latter case we compute the minimum weight in…
Triality is a classical notion in geometry that arose in the context of the Lie groups of type $D_4$. Another notion of triality, Wilson triality, appears in the context of reflexible maps. We build a bridge between these two notions, showing how to construct an incidence geometry with a triality from a map that admits a Wilson triality. We also extend a result by Jones and Poulton, showing that for every prime power $q$, the group ${\rm L}_2(q^3)$ has maps that admit Wilson trialities but no dualities.
If a geometry $Γ$ is isomorphic to the residue of a point $A$ of a shadow geometry of a spherical building $Δ$, a representation $\varepsilon_Δ^A$ of $Γ$ can be given in the unipotent radical $U_{A^*}$ of the stabilizer in $\mathrm{Aut}(Δ)$ of a flag $A^*$ of $Δ$ opposite to $A$, every element of $Γ$ being mapped onto a suitable subgroup of $U_{A^*}$. We call such a representation a unipotent representation. We develope some theory for unipotent representations and we examine a number of interesting cases, where a projective embedding of a Lie incidence geometry $Γ$ can be obtained as a quotie…
Parapolar spaces are point-line geometries introduced as a geometric approach to (exceptional) algebraic groups. We characterize a wide class of Lie geometries as parapolar spaces satisfying a simple intersection property. In particular many of the exceptional Lie incidence geometries occur. {In an appendix, we extend our result to the locally disconnected case and discuss the locally disconnected case of some other well known characterizations.
By means of associated structural invariants, we efficiently construct four biplanes of order 9 - except the one with the smallest automorphism group, that is found by Janko and Trung. The notion of non-transversal vector is introduced since we observed related properties that provide significantly more efficient constructions. There is a dichotomy in the structure of biplanes of order 7 and 9 with respect to the incidence matrix symmetry.
Let $X$ be a finite connected poset and $K$ a field. We study the question, when all Lie automorphisms of the incidence algebra $I(X,K)$ are proper. Without any restriction on the length of $X$ we find only a sufficient condition involving certain equivalence relation on the set of maximal chains of $X$. For some classes of posets of length one, such as finite connected crownless posets (i.e., without weak crown subposets), crowns and ordinal sums of two antichains we give a complete answer.
This is the second report of our work on the construction of directed strongly regular graphs. In our previous work, we constructed a couple of infinite families of new directed strongly regular graphs on the sets of antiflags of partial geometries and group divisible designs. In this paper, we use some collections of antiflags (not the entire set of antiflags) of tactical configurations to construct another couple of infinite families of directed strongly regular graphs. Our construction methods are capable of producing many, if not all, nonisomorphic directed strongly regular graphs with sam…
This is a continuation of our earlier works \cite{KhrypchenkoWei, Yang20211, Yang20212} with respect to (non-)linear Lie-type derivations of finitary incidence algebras. Let $X$ be a pre-ordered set, $\mathcal{R}$ be a $2$-torsionfree and $(n-1)$-torsionfree commutative ring with identity, where $n\geq 2$ is an integer. Let $FI(X,\mathcal{R})$ be the finitary incidence algebra of $X$ over $\mathcal{R}$. In this paper, a complete clarification is obtained for the structure of nonlinear Lie-type derivations of $FI(X,\mathcal{R})$. We introduce a new class of derivations on $FI(X,\mathcal{R})$ na…
The incidence category $\C_{\F}$ of a family $\F$ of colored posets closed under disjoint unions and the operation of taking convex sub-posets was introduced by the author in \cite{Sz}, where the Ringel-Hall algebra $\H_{\F}$ of $\C_{\F}$ was also defined. We show that if the Hasse diagrams underlying $\F$ are rooted trees, then the subspace $\n_{\F}$ of primitive elements of $\H_{\F}$ carries a pre-Lie structure, defined over $\mathbb{Z}$, and with positive structure constants. We give several examples of $\n_{\F}$, including the nilpotent subalgebras of $\mathfrak{sl}_n$, $L \mathfrak{gl}_n$…
Circle geometries are incidence structures that capture the geometry of circles on spheres, cones and hyperboloids in 3-dimensional space. In a previous paper, the author characterised the largest intersecting families in finite ovoidal circle geometries, except for Möbius planes of odd order. In this paper we show that also in these Möbius planes, if the order is greater than 3, the largest intersecting families are the sets of circles through a fixed point. We show the same result in the only known family of finite non-ovoidal circle geometries. Using the same techniques, we show a stability…
We prove three theorems giving extremal bounds on the incidence structures determined by subsets of the points and blocks of a balanced incomplete block design (BIBD). These results generalize and strengthen known bounds on the number of incidences between points and $m$-flats in affine geometries over finite fields. First, we show an upper bound on the number of incidences between sufficiently large subsets of the points and blocks of a BIBD. Second, we show that a sufficiently large subset of the points of a BIBD determines many t-rich blocks. Third, we show that a sufficiently large subset …
Let $X_n(K)$ be a building of Coxeter type $X_n = A_n$ or $X_n = D_n$ defined over a given division ring $K$ (a field when $X_n = D_n$). For a non-connected set $J$ of nodes of the diagram $X_n$, let $Γ(K) = Gr_J(X_n(K))$ be the $J$-Grassmannian of $X_n(K)$. We prove that $Γ(K)$ cannot be generated over any proper sub-division ring $K_0$ of $K$. As a consequence, the generating rank of $Γ(K)$ is infinite when $K$ is not finitely generated. In particular, if $K$ is the algebraic closure of a finite field of prime order then the generating rank of $Gr_{1,n}(A_n(K))$ is infinite, although its emb…
This article is concerned with the rigidity properties of geometric realizations of incidence geometries of rank two as points and lines in the Euclidean plane; we care about the distance being preserved among collinear points. We discuss the rigidity properties of geometric realizations of incidence geometries in relation to the rigidity of geometric realizations of other well-known structures, such as graphs and hypergraphs.The $2$-plane matroid is also discussed. Further, we extend a result of Whiteley to determine necessary conditions for an incidence geometry of points and lines with exac…
A classical result by Erdős, and later on by Bondy and Simonivits, states that every $n$-vertex graph with no cycle of length $2k$ has at most $O(n^{1+1 /k})$ edges. This bound is known to be tight when $k \in \{2,3,5\},$ but it is a major open problem in extremal graph theory to decide if this bound is tight for all $k$. In this paper, we study the effect of forbidding short even cycles in incidence graphs of point-line arrangements in the plane. It is not known if the Erdős upper bound stated above can be improved to $o(n^{1+1/k})$ in this geometric setting, and in this note, we establish no…
Cameron-Liebler sets were originally defined as collections of lines (`line classes') in $\mathrm{PG}(3,q)$ sharing certain properties with line classes of symmetric tactical decompositions. While there are many equivalent characterisations, these objects are defined as sets of lines whose characteristic vector lies in the image of the transpose of the point-line incidence matrix of $\mathrm{PG}(3,q)$, and so combinatorially they behave like a union of pairwise disjoint point-pencils. Recently, the concept of a Cameron-Liebler set has been generalised to several other settings. In this article…
We generalize the Szemerédi-Trotter incidence theorem, to bound the number of complete \emph{flags} in higher dimensions. Specifically, for each $i=0,1,\ldots,d-1$, we are given a finite set $S_i$ of $i$-flats in $\R^d$ or in $\C^d$, and a (complete) flag is a tuple $(f_0,f_1,\ldots,f_{d-1})$, where $f_i\in S_i$ for each $i$ and $f_i\subset f_{i+1}$ for each $i=0,1,\ldots,d-2$. Our main result is an upper bound on the number of flags which is tight in the worst case. We also study several other kinds of incidence problems, including (i) incidences between points and lines in $\R^3$ such that a…
We study a wide spectrum of incidence problems involving points and curves or points and surfaces in $\mathbb R^3$. The current (and in fact the only viable) approach to such problems, pioneered by Guth and Katz [2010,2015], requires a variety of tools from algebraic geometry, most notably (i) the polynomial partitioning technique, and (ii) the study of algebraic surfaces that are ruled by lines or, in more recent studies [Guth-Zahl 2016], by algebraic curves of some constant degree. By exploiting and refining these tools, we obtain new and improved bounds for numerous incidence problems in $\…
We prove a new, tight upper bound on the number of incidences between points and hyperplanes in Euclidean d-space. Given n points, of which k are colored red, there are O_d(m^{2/3}k^{2/3}n^{(d-2)/3} + kn^{d-2} + m) incidences between the k red points and m hyperplanes spanned by all n points provided that m = Ω(n^{d-2}). For the monochromatic case k = n, this was proved by Agarwal and Aronov. We use this incidence bound to prove that a set of n points, no more than n-k of which lie on any plane or two lines, spans Ω(nk^2) planes. We also provide an infinite family of counterexamples to a conje…
We present a direct and fairly simple proof of the following incidence bound: Let $P$ be a set of $m$ points and $L$ a set of $n$ lines in ${\mathbb R}^d$, for $d\ge 3$, which lie in a common algebraic two-dimensional surface of degree $D$ that does not contain any 2-flat, so that no 2-flat contains more than $s \le D$ lines of $L$. Then the number of incidences between $P$ and $L$ is $$ I(P,L)=O\left(m^{1/2}n^{1/2}D^{1/2} + m^{2/3}\min\{n,D^{2}\}^{1/3}s^{1/3} + m + n\right). $$ When $d=3$, this improves the bound of Guth and Katz~\cite{GK2} for this special case, when $D$ is not too large. A …
A regular linear line complex is a three-parameter set of lines in space, whose Plücker vectors lie in a hyperplane, which is not tangent to the Klein quadric. Our main result is a bound $O(n^{1/2}m^{3/4} + m+n)$ for the number of incidences between $n$ lines in a complex and $m$ points in $\mathbb F^3$, where $\mathbb F$ is a field, and $n\leq char(\mathbb F)^{4/3}$ in positive characteristic. Zahl has recently observed that bichromatic pairwise incidences of lines coming from two distinct line complexes account for the nonzero single distance problem for a set of $n$ points in $\mathbb F^3$.…
We study incidences between points and algebraic curves in three dimensions, taken from a family $C$ of curves that have almost two degrees of freedom, meaning that every pair of curves intersect in $O(1)$ points, for any pair of points $p$, $q$, there are only $O(1)$ curves of $C$ that pass through both points, and a pair $p$, $q$ of points admit a curve of $C$ that passes through both of them iff $F(p,q)=0$ for some polynomial $F$. We study two specific instances, one involving unit circles in $R^3$ that pass through some fixed point (so called anchored unit circles), and the other involving…
In this paper we establish an improved bound for the number of incidences between a set $P$ of $m$ points and a set $H$ of $n$ planes in $\mathbb R^3$, provided that the points lie on a two-dimensional nonlinear irreducible algebraic variety $V$ of constant degree. Specifically, the bound is $$ O\left( m^{2/3}n^{2/3} + m^{6/11}n^{9/11}\log^β(m^3/n) + m + n + \sum_\ell |P_\ell|\cdot |H_\ell| \right) , $$ where the constant of proportionality and the constant exponent $β$ depend on the degree of $V$, and where the sum ranges over all lines $\ell$ that are fully contained in $V$ and contain at le…
Let $P$ be a set of $m$ points and $L$ a set of $n$ lines in $\mathbb R^4$, such that the points of $P$ lie on an algebraic three-dimensional surface of degree $D$ that does not contain hyperplane or quadric components, and no 2-flat contains more than $s$ lines of $L$. We show that the number of incidences between $P$ and $L$ is $$ I(P,L) = O\left(m^{1/2}n^{1/2}D + m^{2/3}n^{1/3}s^{1/3} + nD + m\right) , $$ for some absolute constant of proportionality. This significantly improves the bound of the authors, for arbitrary sets of points and lines in $\mathbb R^4$, when $D$ is not too large. The…
Let $L$ be a set of $n$ lines in $R^3$ that is contained, when represented as points in the four-dimensional Plücker space of lines in $R^3$, in an irreducible variety $T$ of constant degree which is \emph{non-degenerate} with respect to $L$ (see below). We show: \medskip \noindent{\bf (1)} If $T$ is two-dimensional, the number of $r$-rich points (points incident to at least $r$ lines of $L$) is $O(n^{4/3+ε}/r^2)$, for $r \ge 3$ and for any $ε>0$, and, if at most $n^{1/3}$ lines of $L$ lie on any common regulus, there are at most $O(n^{4/3+ε})$ $2$-rich points. For $r$ larger than some suffici…
