Geometries with trialities arising from linear spaces

Abstract

A triality is a sort of super-symmetry that exchanges the types of the elements of an incidence geometry in cycles of length three. Although geometries with trialities exhibit fascinating behaviors, their construction is challenging, making them rare in the literature. To understand trialities more deeply, it is crucial to have a wide variety of examples at hand. In this article, we introduce a general method for constructing various rank-three incidence systems with trialities. Specifically, for any rank two incidence system $Γ$, we define its triangle complex $Δ(Γ)$, a rank three incidence system whose elements consist of three copies of the flags (pairs of incident elements) of $Γ$. This triangle complex always admits a triality that cyclically permutes the three copies. We then explore in detail the properties of the triangle complex when $Γ$ is a linear space, including flag-transitivity, the existence of dualities, and connectivity properties. As a consequence of our work, this construction yields the first infinite family of thick, flag-transitive and residually connected geometries with trialities but no dualities.