Embedding of orthogonal Buekenhout-Metz unitals in the Desarguesian plane of order q^2

A unital, that is a 2-(q^3 + 1, q + 1, 1) block-design, is embedded in a projective plane π of order q^2 if its points are points of π and its blocks are subsets of lines of π, the point-block incidences being the same as in π. Regarding unitals U which are isomorphic, as a block-design, to the classical unital, T. Szonyi and the authors recently proved that the natural embedding is the unique embedding of U into the Desarguesian plane of order q^2. In this paper we extend this uniqueness result to all unitals which are isomorphic, as block-designs, to orthogonal Buekenhout-Metz unitals

Unitals in projective planes revisited

This thesis revisits the topic of unitals in finite projective planes. A unital U in a projective plane of order q2 is a set of q3 + 1 points, such that every line meets U in one or q + 1 points. Unitals are an important class of point-set in finite projective planes, whose combinatorial and algebraic properties have been the subject of considerable study. In this work, we summarise, revise, and extend contemporary research on unitals. Chapter 1 covers the necessary prerequisites to study unitals and related objects in finite geometry. In Chapter 2, we focus on Buekenhout-Tits unitals and answer some open problems regarding their equivalence, stabilisers and feet. The results presented in Chapter 2 are also available in a preprint paper [22]. Following this, Chapter 3 summarises recent results on Buekenhout- Metz unitals, and presents a small result on the intersection of ovoidal-Buekenhout-Metz unitals and Buekenhout-Metz unitals. Chapter 4 highlights Kestenband arcs and their relationship to Hermitian unitals, and makes explicit a proof of their equivalence. Finally in Chapter 5, we review our understanding of Figueroa planes. Beyond describing ovals and unitals in Figueroa planes, we also suggest generalisations of their constructions to semi-ovals

Embeddings of Ree unitals in a projective plane over a field

We show that the Ree unital $\mathcal{R}(q)$ has an embedding in a projective plane over a field $F$ if and only if $q=3$ and $\mathbb{F}_8$ is a subfield of $F$. In this case, the embedding is unique up to projective linear transformations. Besides elementary calculations, our proof uses the classification of the maximal subgroups of the simple Ree groups