An Erdős–Ko–Rado result for sets of pairwise non-opposite lines in finite classical polar spaces

Abstract

Abstract In this paper, we call a set of lines of a finite classical polar space an Erdős–Ko–Rado set of lines if no two lines of the polar space are opposite, which means that for any two lines l and h in such a set there exists a point on l that is collinear with all points of h. We classify all largest such sets provided the order of the underlying field of the polar space is not too small compared to the rank of the polar space. The motivation for studying these sets comes from [7], where a general Erdős–Ko–Rado problem was formulated for finite buildings. The presented result provides one solution in finite classical polar spaces.