Uniform extensions of partial geometries

Abstract

A geometry of rank 2 is an incidence system (P, \(\mathcal{B}\)), where P is a set of points and \(\mathcal{B}\) is a set of subsets from P, called blocks. Two points are called collinear if they lie in a common block. A pair (a, B) from (P, \(\mathcal{B}\)) is called a flag if its point belongs to the block, and an antiflag otherwise. A geometry is called φ-uniform (φ is a natural number) if for any antiflag (a, B) the number of points in the block B collinear to the point a equals 0 or φ, and strongly φ-uniform if this number equals φ. In this paper, we study φ-uniform extensions of partial geometries pGα(s, t) with φ = s and strongly φ-uniform geometries with φ = s − 1. In particular, the results on extensions of generalized quadrangles, obtained earlier by Cameron and Fisher, are extended to the case of partial geometries.