Geometric characterizations of finite Chevalley groups of type B₂

Thas, Koen; Van Maldeghem, Hendrik

doi:10.1090/S0002-9947-07-04257-2

Geometric characterizations of finite Chevalley groups of type B$_{2}$
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Abstract:

Finite Moufang generalized quadrangles were classified in 1974 as a corollary to the classification of finite groups with a split BN-pair of rank $2$, by P. Fong and G. M. Seitz (1973), (1974). Later on, work of S. E. Payne and J. A. Thas culminated in an almost complete, elementary proof of that classification; see Finite Generalized Quadrangles, 1984. Using slightly more group theory, first W. M. Kantor (1991), then the first author (2001), and finally, essentially without group theory, J. A. Thas (preprint), completed this geometric approach. Recently, J. Tits and R. Weiss classified all (finite and infinite) Moufang polygons (2002), and this provides a third independent proof for the classification of finite Moufang quadrangles. In the present paper, we start with a much weaker condition on a BN-pair of Type $\mathbf {B}_2$ and show that it must correspond to a Moufang quadrangle, proving that the BN-pair arises from a finite Chevalley group of (relative) Type $\mathbf {B}_2$. Our methods consist of a mixture of combinatorial, geometric and group theoretic arguments, but we do not use the classification of finite simple groups. The condition on the BN-pair translates to the generalized quadrangle as follows: for each point $x$, the stabilizer of all lines through that point acts transitively on the points opposite $x$.

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