English

Confluence Graphs of Unitals

Combinatorics 2025-08-29 v2

Abstract

We show that the cliques of maximal size in the confluence graph of an arbitrary unital of order q>2q>2 have size q2q^2, and that these cliques are the pencils of all blocks through a given point. This solves the Erd\H{o}s-Ko-Rado problem for all unitals. We also determine all maximal cliques of the confluence graph of the Hermitian unitals. As an application, we show that the confluence graph of an arbitrary unital unambiguously determines the unital. Along the way, we show that each linear space with q2q^2 points such that the sizes of both point rows and line pencils are bounded above by q+1q+1 embeds in a projective plane of order qq.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2311.11693,
  title  = {Confluence Graphs of Unitals},
  author = {Theo Grundhöfer and Markus J. Stroppel and Hendrik Van Maldeghem},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2311.11693},
  year   = {2025}
}