Smooth projective plane explained
. Its geometric operations of joining two distinct points by a line and of intersecting two lines in a point are not only continuous but even
smooth (infinitely differentiable
). Similarly, the classical planes over the
complex numbers, the
quaternions, and the
octonions are smooth planes. However, these are not the only such planes.
Definition and basic properties
A smooth projective plane
consists of a point space
and a line space
that are smooth
manifolds and where both geometric operations of joining and intersecting are smooth.
The geometric operations of smooth planes are continuous; hence, each smooth plane is a compact topological plane. Smooth planes exist only with point spaces of dimension 2m where
, because this is true for compact connected projective topological planes. These four cases will be treated separately below.
Theorem. The point manifold of a smooth projective plane is homeomorphic to its classical counterpart, and so is the line manifold.
Automorphisms
Automorphisms play a crucial role in the study of smooth planes. A bijection of the point set of a projective plane is called a collineation, if it maps lines onto lines. The continuous collineations of a compact projective plane
form the group
. This group is taken with the topology of
uniform convergence. We have:
Theorem. If
is a smooth plane, then each continuous collineation of
is smooth
; in other words, the group of automorphisms of a smooth plane
coincides with
. Moreover,
is a smooth Lie transformation group of
and of
.The automorphism groups of the four classical planes are simple Lie groups of dimension 8, 16, 35, or 78, respectively. All other smooth planes have much smaller groups. See below.
Translation planes
A projective plane is called a translation plane if its automorphism group has a subgroup that fixes each point on some line
and
acts sharply transitively on the set of points not on
.
Theorem. Every smooth projective translation plane
is isomorphic to one of the four classical planes
.This shows that there are many compact connected topological projective planes that are not smooth. On the other hand, the following construction yields real analytic non-Desarguesian planes of dimension 2, 4, and 8, with a compact group of automorphisms of dimension 1, 4, and 13, respectively: represent points and lines in the usual way by homogeneous coordinates over the real or complex numbers or the quaternions, say, by vectors of length
. Then the incidence of the point
and the line
is defined by
, where
is a fixed real parameter such that
. These planes are self-dual.
2-dimensional planes
, each line is a
Jordan curve in
(a closed subset homeomorphic to the circle), and any two distinct points are joined by a unique line. Then
is homeomorphic to the point space of the real plane
, any two distinct lines intersect in a unique point, and the geometric operations are continuous (apply to the complement of a line). A familiar family of examples was given by
Moulton in 1902. These planes are characterized by the fact that they have a 4-dimensional automorphism group. They are not isomorphic to a smooth plane. More generally, all non-classical compact 2-dimensional planes
such that
\dim\operatorname{Aut}{lP}\ge3
are known explicitly; none of these is smooth:
Theorem. If
is a smooth 2-dimensional plane and if
\dim\operatorname{Aut}{lP}\ge3
, then
is the classical real plane
.4-dimensional planes
All compact planes
with a 4-dimensional point space and
\operatorname{Aut}{lP}\ge7
have been classified. Up to duality, they are either translation planes or they are isomorphic to a unique so-called shift plane. According to, this shift plane is not smooth. Hence, the result on translation planes implies:
Theorem. A smooth 4-dimensional plane is isomorphic to the classical complex plane, or
\dim\operatorname{Aut}{lP}\le6
.8-dimensional planes
Compact 8-dimensional topological planes
have been discussed in and, more recently, in . Put
\Sigma=\operatorname{Aut}{lP}
. Either
is the classical quaternion plane or
. If
, then
is a translation plane, or a dual translation plane, or a Hughes plane. The latter can be characterized as follows:
leaves some classical complex subplane
invariant and induces on
the connected component of its full automorphism group.
[1] The Hughes planes are not smooth. This yields a result similar to the case of 4-dimensional planes:
Theorem. If
is a smooth 8-dimensional plane, then
is the classical quaternion plane or
.16-dimensional planes
Let
denote the automorphism group of a compact 16-dimensional topological projective plane
. Either
is the smooth classical octonion plane or
. If
, then
fixes a line
and a point
, and the affine plane
and its dual are translation planes. If
, then
also fixes an incident point-line pair, but neither
nor
are known explicitly. Nevertheless, none of these planes can be smooth:
Theorem. If
is a 16-dimensional smooth projective plane, then
is the classical octonion plane or
.Main theorem
The last four results combine to give the following theorem:
If
is the largest value of
\dim\operatorname{Aut}{lP}
, where
is a non-classical compact 2
m-dimensional
topological projective plane, then
\dim\operatorname{Aut}{lP}\lecm-2
whenever
is even smooth.
Complex analytic planes
The condition, that the geometric operations of a projective plane are complex analytic, is very restrictive. In fact, it is satisfied only in the classical complex plane.
Theorem. Every complex analytic projective plane is isomorphic as an analytic plane to the complex plane with its standard analytic structure.
Notes and References
- 3.19