Hua's fundamental theorem of geometry of rectangular matrices over EAS division rings

Abstract

The fundamental theorem of geometry of rectangular matrices describes the general form of bijective maps on the space of all $m\times n$ matrices over a division ring $\mathbb{D}$ which preserve adjacency in both directions. This result proved by Hua in the nineteen forties has been recently improved in several directions. One can study such maps without the bijectivity assumption or one can try to get the same conclusion under the weaker assumption that adjacency is preserved in one direction only. And the last possibility is to study maps acting between matrix spaces of different sizes. The optimal result would describe maps preserving adjacency in one direction only acting between spaces of rectangular matrices of different sizes in the absence of any regularity condition (injectivity or surjectivity). A division ring is said to be EAS if it is not isomorphic to any proper subring. It has been known before that it is possible to construct adjacency preserving maps with wild behaviour on matrices over division rings that are not EAS. For matrices over EAS division rings it has been recently proved that adjacency preserving maps acting between matrix spaces of different sizes satisfying a certain weak surjectivity condition are either degenerate or of the expected simple standard form. We will remove this weak surjectivity assumption, thus solving completely the long standing open problem of the optimal version of Hua's theorem.