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Let $\cal P$ be a non-degenerate polar space. In [I. Cardinali, L. Giuzzi, A. Pasini, "The generating rank of a polar grassmannian", Adv. Geom. 21:4 (2021), 515-539 doi:10.1515/advgeom-2021-0022 (arXiv:1906.10560)] we introduced an intrinsic parameter of $\cal P$, called the anisotropic gap, defined as the least upper bound of the lengths of the well-ordered chains of subspaces of $\cal P$ containing a frame; when $\cal P$ is orthogonal, we also defined two other parameters of $\cal P$, called the elliptic and parabolic gap, related to the universal embedding of $\cal P$. In this paper, assuming $\cal P$ is an orthogonal polar space, we prove that the elliptic and parabolic gaps can be described as intrinsic invariants of $\cal P$ without making recourse to the embedding., Comment: 20 pages/revised version

A polar space S is said to be symplectic if it admits an embedding e in a projective geometry PG(V) such that the e-image e(S) of S is defined by an alternating form of V. In this paper we characterize symplectic polar spaces in terms of their incidence properties, with no mention of peculiar properties of their embeddings. This is relevant especially when S admits different (non isomorphic) embeddings, as it is the case (precisely) when S is defined over a field of characteristic 2., Comment: 20 pages/extensively revised

Let $\Gamma$ be an embeddable non-degenerate polar space of finite rank $n \geq 2$. Assuming that $\Gamma$ admits the universal embedding (which is true for all embeddable polar spaces except grids of order at least $5$ and certain generalized quadrangles defined over quaternion division rings), let $\varepsilon:\Gamma\to\mathrm{PG}(V)$ be the universal embedding of $\Gamma$. Let $\cal S$ be a subspace of $\Gamma$ and suppose that $\cal S$, regarded as a polar space, has non-degenerate rank at least $2$. We shall prove that $\cal S$ is the $\varepsilon$-preimage of a projective subspace of $\mathrm{PG}(V)$., Comment: 16 pages

Let $\Gamma(n,k)$ be the Grassmann graph formed by the $k$-dimensional subspaces of a vector space of dimension $n$ over a field $\mathbb F$ and, for $t\in \mathbb{N}\setminus \{0\}$, let $\Delta_t(n,k)$ be the subgraph of $\Gamma(n,k)$ formed by the set of linear $[n,k]$-codes having minimum dual distance at least $t+1$. We show that if $|{\mathbb F}|\geq{n\choose t}$ then $\Delta_t(n,k)$ is connected and it is isometrically embedded in $\Gamma(n,k)$. This generalizes some results of [M. Kwiatkowski, M. Pankov, "On the distance between linear codes", Finite Fields Appl. 39 (2016), 251--263] and [M. Kwiatkowski, M. Pankov, A. Pasini, "The graphs of projective codes" Finite Fields Appl. 54 (2018), 15--29]., Comment: 13 pages/final version

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 $\Gamma(K) = Gr_J(X_n(K))$ be the $J$-Grassmannian of $X_n(K)$. We prove that $\Gamma(K)$ cannot be generated over any proper sub-division ring $K_0$ of $K$. As a consequence, the generating rank of $\Gamma(K)$ 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 embedding rank is either $(n+1)^2-1$ or $(n+1)^2$., Comment: 20 pages; revised version

In this paper we compute the generating rank of $k$-polar Grassmannians defined over commutative division rings. Among the new results, we compute the generating rank of $k$-Grassmannians arising from Hermitian forms of Witt index $n$ defined over vector spaces of dimension $N > 2n$. We also study generating sets for the $2$-Grassmannians arising from quadratic forms of Witt index $n$ defined over $V(N,{\mathbb F}_q)$ for $q=4,8,9$ and $2n \leq N \leq 2n+2$. We prove that for $N >6$ they can be generated over the prime subfield, thus determining their generating rank., Comment: 32 pages

In this paper we compute the dimension of the Grassmann embeddings of the polar Grassmannians associated to a possibly degenerate Hermitian, alternating or quadratic form with possibly non-maximal Witt index. Moreover, in the characteristic $2$ case, when the form is quadratic and non-degenerate with bilinearization of minimal Witt index, we define a generalization of the so-called Weyl embedding (see [I. Cardinali and A. Pasini, Grassmann and Weyl embeddings of orthogonal Grassmannians. J. Algebr. Combin. 38 (2013), 863-888]) and prove that the Grassmann embedding is a quotient of this generalized "Weyl-like" embedding. We also estimate the dimension of the latter., Comment: 25 pages/revised version after review

In [I. Cardinali and L. Giuzzi. Line Hermitian Grassmann codes and their parameters. Finite Fields Appl., 51: 407-432, 2018] we introduced line Hermitian Grassmann codes and determined their parameters. The aim of this paper is to present (in the spirit of [I. Cardinali and L. Giuzzi. Enumerative coding for line polar Grassmannians with applications to codes. Finite Fields Appl., 46:107-138, 2017]) an algorithm for the point enumerator of a line Hermitian Grassmannian which can be usefully applied to get efficient encoders, decoders and error correction algorithms for the aforementioned codes., Comment: 26 pages

In this paper we introduce and study line Hermitian Grassmann codes as those subcodes of the Grassmann codes associated to the $2$-Grassmannian of a Hermitian polar space defined over a finite field of square order. In particular, we determine their parameters and characterize the words of minimum weight., Comment: 25 pages/revised version after review

Let ${\mathcal G}_k(V)$ be the $k$-Grassmannian of a vector space $V$ with $\dim V=n$. Given a hyperplane $H$ of ${\mathcal G}_k(V)$, we define in [I. Cardinali, L. Giuzzi, A. Pasini, A geometric approach to alternating $k$-linear forms, J. Algebraic Combin. doi:10.1007/s10801-016-0730-6] a point-line subgeometry of ${\mathrm{PG}}(V)$ called the {\it geometry of poles of $H$}. In the present paper, exploiting the classification of alternating trilinear forms in low dimension, we characterize the possible geometries of poles arising for $k=3$ and $n\leq 7$ and propose some new constructions. We also extend a result of [J.Draisma, R. Shaw, Singular lines of trilinear forms, Linear Algebra Appl. doi:10.1016/j.laa.2010.03.040] regarding the existence of line spreads of ${\mathrm{PG}}(5,{\mathbb K})$ arising from hyperplanes of ${\mathcal G}_3(V).$, Comment: 34 pages

We introduce the class of transparent embeddings for a point-line geometry $\Gamma = ({\mathcal P},{\mathcal L})$ as the class of full projective embeddings $\varepsilon$ of $\Gamma$ such that the preimage of any projective line fully contained in $\varepsilon({\mathcal P})$ is a line of $\Gamma$. We will then investigate the transparency of Pl\"ucker embeddings of projective and polar grassmannians and spin embeddings of half-spin geometries and dual polar spaces of orthogonal type. As an application of our results on transparency, we will derive several Chow-like theorems for polar grassmannians and half-spin geometries., Comment: 28 Pages/revised version after review

In this paper we determine the minimum distance of orthogonal line-Grassmann codes for $q$ even. The case $q$ odd was solved in "I. Cardinali, L. Giuzzi, K. Kaipa, A. Pasini, Line Polar Grassmann Codes of Orthogonal Type, J. Pure Applied Algebra." We also show that for $q$ even all minimum weight codewords are equivalent and that symplectic line-Grassmann codes are proper subcodes of codimension $2n$ of the orthogonal ones., Comment: 15 pages/revised version after review

Given an $n$-dimensional vector space $V$ over a field $\mathbb K$, let $2\leq k < n$. There is a natural correspondence between the alternating $k$-linear forms $\varphi$ of $V$ and the linear functionals $f$ of $\bigwedge^kV$. Let $\varepsilon_k:{\mathcal G}_k(V)\rightarrow {\mathrm{PG}}(\bigwedge^kV)$ be the Plucker embedding of the $k$-Grassmannian ${\mathcal G}_k(V)$ of $V$. Then $\varepsilon_k^{-1}(\ker(f)\cap\varepsilon_k(\mathcal{G}_k(V)))$ is a hyperplane of the point-line geometry ${\mathcal G}_k(V)$. All hyperplanes of ${\mathcal G}_k(V)$ can be obtained in this way. For a hyperplane $H$ of ${\mathcal G}_k(V)$, let $R^\uparrow(H)$ be the subspace of ${\mathcal G}_{k-1}(V)$ formed by the $(k-1)$-subspaces $A\subset V$ such that $H$ contains all $k$-subspaces that contain $A$. In other words, if $\varphi$ is the (unique modulo a scalar) alternating $k$-linear form defining $H$, then the elements of $R^\uparrow(H)$ are the $(k-1)$-subspaces $A = \langle a_1,\ldots, a_{k-1}\rangle$ of $V$ such that $\varphi(a_1,\ldots, a_{k-1},x) = 0$ for all $x\in V$. When $n-k$ is even it might be that $R^\uparrow(H) = \emptyset$. When $n-k$ is odd, then $R^\uparrow(H) \neq \emptyset$, since every $(k-2)$-subspace of $V$ is contained in at least one member of $R^\uparrow(H)$. If every $(k-2)$-subspace of $V$ is contained in precisely one member of $R^\uparrow(H)$ we say that $R^\uparrow(H)$ is spread-like. In this paper we obtain some results on $R^\uparrow(H)$ which answer some open questions from the literature and suggest the conjecture that, if $n-k$ is even and at least $4$, then $R^\uparrow(H) \neq \emptyset$ but for one exception with ${\mathbb K}\leq{\mathbb R}$ and $(n,k) = (7,3)$, while if $n-k$ is odd and at least $5$ then $R^\uparrow(H)$ is never spread-like., Comment: 29 Pages

We present a concise description of Orthogonal Polar Grassmann Codes and motivate their relevance. We also describe efficient encoding and decoding algorithms for the case of Line Grassmannians and introduce some open problems., Comment: This is a copy of the Extended Abstract accepted for presentation at MEGA2015 in Trento

We introduce the Symplectic Grassmann codes as projective codes defined by symplectic Grassmannians, in analogy with the orthogonal Grassmann codes introduced in [4]. Note that the Lagrangian-Grassmannian codes are a special class of Symplectic Grassmann codes. We describe the weight enumerator of the Lagrangian--Grassmannian codes of rank $2$ and $3$ and we determine the minimum distance of the line Symplectic Grassmann codes., Comment: Revised contents and biblography

A $k$-polar Grassmannian is the geometry having as pointset the set of all $k$-dimensional subspaces of a vector space $V$ which are totally isotropic for a given non-degenerate bilinear form $\mu$ defined on $V.$ Hence it can be regarded as a subgeometry of the ordinary $k$-Grassmannian. In this paper we deal with orthogonal line Grassmannians and with symplectic line Grassmannians, i.e. we assume $k=2$ and $\mu$ a non-degenerate symmetric or alternating form. We will provide a method to efficiently enumerate the pointsets of both orthogonal and symplectic line Grassmannians. This has several nice applications; among them, we shall discuss an efficient encoding/decoding/error correction strategy for line polar Grassmann codes of both types., Comment: 27 pages; revised version after review

Polar Grassmann codes of orthogonal type have been introduced in I. Cardinali and L. Giuzzi, \emph{Codes and caps from orthogonal Grassmannians}, {Finite Fields Appl.} {\bf 24} (2013), 148-169. They are subcodes of the Grassmann code arising from the projective system defined by the Pl\"ucker embedding of a polar Grassmannian of orthogonal type. In the present paper we fully determine the minimum distance of line polar Grassmann Codes of orthogonal type for $q$ odd.

Let Q_0 be the classical generalized quadrangle of order q = 2n arising from a non-degenerate quadratic form in a 5-dimensional vector space defined over a finite field of order q. We consider the rank two geometry X having as points all the elliptic ovoids of Q_0 and as lines the maximal pencils of elliptic ovoids of Q_0 pairwise tangent at the same point. We first prove that X is isomorphic to a 2-fold quotient of the affine generalized quadrangle Q \setminus Q_0 where Q is the classical (q; q^2)-generalized quadrangle admitting Q_0 as a hyperplane. Then, we investigate the collinearity graph \Gamma of X: In particular, we obtain a classification of the cliques of \Gamma proving that they arise either from lines of Q or subgeometries of Q defined over F_2

For $k = 1, 2,...,n-1$ let $V_k = V(\lambda_k)$ be the Weyl module for the special orthogonal group $G = \mathrm{SO}(2n+1,\F)$ with respect to the $k$-th fundamental dominant weight $\lambda_k$ of the root system of type $B_n$ and put $V_n = V(2\lambda_n)$. It is well known that all of these modules are irreducible when $\mathrm{char}(\F) \neq 2$ while when $\mathrm{char}(\F) = 2$ they admit many proper submodules. In this paper, assuming that $\mathrm{char}(\F) = 2$, we prove that $V_k$ admits a chain of submodules $V_k = M_k \supset M_{k-1}\supset ... \supset M_1\supset M_0 \supset M_{-1} = 0$ where $M_i \cong V_i$ for $1,..., k-1$ and $M_0$ is the trivial 1-dimensional module. We also show that for $i = 1, 2,..., k$ the quotient $M_i/M_{i-2}$ is isomorphic to the so called $i$-th Grassmann module for $G$. Resting on this fact we can give a geometric description of $M_{i-1}/M_{i-2}$ as a submodule of the $i$-th Grassmann module. When $\F$ is perfect $G\cong \mathrm{Sp}(2n,\F)$ and $M_i/M_{i-1}$ is isomorphic to the Weyl module for $\mathrm{Sp}(2n,\F)$ relative to the $i$-th fundamental dominant weight of the root system of type $C_n$. All irreducible sections of the latter modules are known. Thus, when $\F$ is perfect, all irreducible sections of $V_k$ are known as well.

This paper is an extended version of a series of lectures on polar spaces given during the workshop and conference 'Groups and Geometries', held at the Indian Statistical Institute in Bangalore in December 2012. The aim of this paper is to give an overview of the theory of polar spaces focusing on some research topics related to polar spaces. We survey the fundamental results about polar spaces starting from classical polar spaces. Then we introduce and report on the state of the art on the following research topics: polar spaces of infinite rank, embedding polar spaces in groups and projective embeddings of dual polar spaces.

An embedding of a point-line geometry \Gamma is usually defined as an injective mapping \epsilon from the point-set of \Gamma to the set of points of a projective space such that \epsilon(l) is a projective line for every line l of \Gamma, but different situations have lately been considered in the literature, where \epsilon(l) is allowed to be a subline of a projective line or a curve. In this paper we propose a more general definition of embedding which includes all the above situations and we focus on a class of embeddings, which we call Grassmman embeddings, where the points of \Gamma are firstly associated to lines of a projective geometry PG(V), next they are mapped onto points of PG(V\wedge V) via the usual projective embedding of the line-grassmannian of PG(V) in PG(V\wedge V). In the central part of our paper we study sets of points of PG(V\wedge V) corresponding to lines of PG(V) totally singular for a given pseudoquadratic form of V. Finally, we apply the results obtained in that part to the investigation of Grassmann embeddings of several generalized quadrangles.

In this paper we investigate linear error correcting codes and projective caps related to the Grassmann embedding $\varepsilon_k^{gr}$ of an orthogonal Grassmannian $\Delta_k$. In particular, we determine some of the parameters of the codes arising from the projective system determined by $\varepsilon_k^{gr}(\Delta_k)$. We also study special sets of points of $\Delta_k$ which are met by any line of $\Delta_k$ in at most 2 points and we show that their image under the Grassmann embedding $\varepsilon_k^{gr}$ is a projective cap., Comment: Keywords: Polar Grassmannian; dual polar space; embedding; error correcting code; cap; Hadamard matrix; Sylvester construction (this is a slightly revised version of v2, with updated bibliography)

Given a point-line geometry P and a pappian projective space S,a veronesean embedding of P in S is an injective map e from the point-set of P to the set of points of S mapping the lines of P onto non-singular conics of S and such that e(P) spans S. In this paper we study veronesean embeddings of the dual polar space \Delta_n associated to a non-singular quadratic form q of Witt index n >= 2 in V = V(2n + 1; F). Three such embeddings are considered,namely the Grassmann embedding gr_n,the composition vs_n of the spin (projective) embedding of \Delta_n in PG(2n-1; F) with the quadric veronesean map of V(2n; F) and a third embedding w_n defined algebraically in the Weyl module V (2\lambda_n),where \lambda_n is the fundamental dominant weight associated to the n-th simple root of the root system of type Bn. We shall prove that w_n and vs_n are isomorphic. If char(F) is different from 2 then V (2\lambda_n) is irreducible and w_n is isomorphic to gr_n while if char(F) = 2 then gr_n is a proper quotient of w_n. In this paper we shall study some of these submodules. Finally we turn to universality,focusing on the case of n = 2. We prove that if F is a finite field of odd order q > 3 then sv_2 is relatively universal. On the contrary,if char(F) = 2 then vs_2 is not universal. We also prove that if F is a perfect field of characteristic 2 then vs_n is not universal,for any n>=2.