Universal Kernel

The object of size 21

Stabilizer D8D_8, rigid: the flags of the Fano plane, the involutions of the group, and the centres of involutions in Klein’s plane.

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The object of size 21 as the flags of the Fano plane: the flag (1,123)(1, 123), and off its line the 4-cycle 4,6,5,74, 6, 5, 7, whose diagonals 45 and 67 meet at 1.

Its incarnations

The seam table names the object in each of the five theories that meet the group. Every entry there is built.

Fano plane
flags; quadrangles with an undirected 4-cycle
Projective line
bisections in the orbit of {0,1,2,3} ∣ {4,5,6,∞}\{0,1,2,3\}\,|\,\{4,5,6,\infty\}; three orbits of perfect matchings
The group
involutions; subgroups C2C_2, C4C_4, D8D_8
Klein quartic
centres; axes
Graphs
Heawood edges

The stabilizer is its own normalizer, so between any two incarnations there is exactly one seam, and the seams agree.

The fifteen objects

168184C256C324C742C41G28S3anchored observers14A4b7S4bvantage lines7S4aclocks14A4a21D842V4b42V4a87:3the sky
The object on the line of sizes. In ink, the objects it maps onto; in blue, those that map onto it. Dots count each object’s automorphisms, and dashed brackets join the pairs with one permutation character.
Proposition

D8D_8 is self-normalizing, so the object is rigid. In Klein’s plane the stabilizer of the centre of an involution is its centralizer, a dihedral group of order 8, and each centre lies on exactly four bitangents.

Example

The flags of the Fano plane, and its quadrangles with an undirected 4-cycle; the bisections of P1(F7)\Proj^1(\F_7) in the orbit of {0,1,2,3}∣{4,5,6,∞}\{0,1,2,3\}|\{4,5,6,\infty\}, and three orbits of perfect matchings; the involutions, and the subgroups C2C_2, C4C_4 and D8D_8; the centres and the axes of involutions in Klein’s plane; the edges of the Heawood graph; the 8-cycles of the Heawood and Coxeter graphs; and the edges of the link of a vertex of the building of PGL⁡(3,Q2)\PGL(3,\Q_2).

Remark(Seams inside one theory)

An undirected 4-cycle on a quadrangle has its two diagonals in one parallel class of the affine plane, which is a point of the complementary line: undirected 4-cycles are flags, a seam that holds for every marking.

Examplecomputed

In Thurston’s congruence link complement it is the bisections of the cusps into two sets of four that span no tetrahedron, and in the Fano plane of the cells the flags. In Klein’s lattice the 21 pairs of vectors of norm 2 reduce at the prime 2 to the flags, the triangles of the building at a vertex; at −7\sqrt{-7} to the 21 points inside the conic of the sky; and in Klein’s plane to the centres of the 21 involutions sv(x)=−x+h(x,v)vs_v(x)=-x+h(x,v)v.

Examplecomputed

At Klein’s lattice each flag (p,ℓ)(p,\ell) is a vector αˉuk\bar\alpha u_k of norm 2, with uku_k an axis of the cube at the neighbour MpM_p, and its involution svs_v is the half-turn about that axis; modulo (α)(\alpha) it is the transvection with centre pp and axis ℓ\ell.

The volume’s word
axis