Veronesean representations of Moufang planes

Abstract

In 1901 Severi [18] proved that the complex quadric Veronese variety is determined by three algebraic/differential geometric properties. In 1984 Mazzocca and Me lone [10] obtained a combinatorial analogue of this result for finite quadric Veronese varieties. We make further abstraction of these properties to characterize Veronesean representations of all the Moufang projective planes defined over a quadratic alternative division algebra over an arbitrary field. In the process, new Veroneseans over a nonperfect field of characteristic 2 (related to purely inseparable field extensions) are found, and their corresponding projective representations of the associated groups studied. We show that these representations are indecomposable, but reducible, and determine their (irreducible) quotient and kernel.