Abelian Projective Planes of Square Order

We prove that, under certain conditions, multipliers of an abelian projective plane of square order have odd order modulo v*, where v* is the exponent of the underlying Singer group. As a consequence, we are able to establish the non-existence of an infinite number of abelian projective planes of square order

Nilpotent Singer groups

Let $N$ be a nilpotent group normal in a group $G$. Suppose that $G$ acts transitively upon the points of a finite non-Desarguesian projective plane $\mathcal{P}$. We prove that, if $\mathcal{P}$ has square order, then $N$ must act semi-regularly on $\mathcal{P}$. In addition we prove that if a finite non-Desarguesian projective plane $\mathcal{P}$ admits more than one nilpotent group which is regular on the points of $\mathcal{P}$ then $\mathcal{P}$ has non-square order and the automorphism group of $\mathcal{P}$ has odd order

Central aspects of skew translation quadrangles, I

Except for the Hermitian buildings $\mathcal{H}(4,q^2)$, up to a combination of duality, translation duality or Payne integration, every known finite building of type $\mathbb{B}_2$ satisfies a set of general synthetic properties, usually put together in the term "skew translation generalized quadrangle" (STGQ). In this series of papers, we classify finite skew translation generalized quadrangles. In the first installment of the series, as corollaries of the machinery we develop in the present paper, (a) we obtain the surprising result that any skew translation quadrangle of odd order $(s,s)$ is a symplectic quadrangle; (b) we determine all skew translation quadrangles with distinct elation groups (a problem posed by Payne in a less general setting); (c) we develop a structure theory for root-elations of skew translation quadrangles which will also be used in further parts, and which essentially tells us that a very general class of skew translation quadrangles admits the theoretical maximal number of root-elations for each member, and hence all members are "central" (the main property needed to control STGQs, as which will be shown throughout); (d) we solve the Main Parameter Conjecture for a class of STGQs containing the class of the previous item, and which conjecturally coincides with the class of all STGQs.Comment: 66 pages; submitted (December 2013

Heisenberg-invariant Kummer surfaces

We study the geometry of Nieto's quintic threefold (Barth & Nieto, J. Alg. Geom. 3, 1994) and the Kummer and abelian surfaces that correspond to special loci.Comment: Plain TeX, 17 pages. Final version, with minor corrections, to appear in Proc. Edinburgh Math. So

Curves on Heisenberg invariant quartic surfaces in projective 3-space

This paper is about the family of smooth quartic surfaces $X \subset \mathbb{P}^3$ that are invariant under the Heisenberg group $H_{2,2}$. For a very general such surface $X$, we show that the Picard number of $X$ is 16 and determine its Picard group. It turns out that the general Heisenberg invariant quartic contains 320 smooth conics and that in the very general case, this collection of conics generates the Picard group.Comment: Updated references, corrected typo