Lax embeddings of the Hermitian unital

Abstract

In this paper, we prove that every lax generalized Veronesean embedding of the Hermitian unital ${\mathcal{U}}$ of ${\mathsf{PG}(2,\mathbb{L}), \mathbb{L}}$ a quadratic extension of the field ${\mathbb{K}}$ and ${|\mathbb{K}| \geq 3}$, in a ${\mathsf{PG}(d,\mathbb{F})}$, with ${\mathbb{F}}$ any field and d ≥ 7, such that disjoint blocks span disjoint subspaces, is the standard Veronesean embedding in a subgeometry ${\mathsf{PG}(7,\mathbb{K}^{\prime})}$ of ${\mathsf{PG}(7,\mathbb{F})}$ (and d = 7) or it consists of the projection from a point ${p \in \mathcal{U}}$ of ${\mathcal{U}{\setminus} \{p\}}$ from a subgeometry ${\mathsf{PG}(7,\mathbb{K}^{\prime})}$ of ${\mathsf{PG}(7,\mathbb{F})}$ into a hyperplane ${\mathsf{PG}(6,\mathbb{K}^{\prime})}$. In order to do so, when ${|\mathbb{K}| >3 }$ we strongly use the linear representation of the affine part of ${\mathcal{U}}$ (the line at infinity being secant) as the affine part of the generalized quadrangle ${\mathsf{Q}(4,\mathbb{K})}$ (the solid at infinity being non-singular); when ${|\mathbb{K}| =3}$, we use the connection of ${\mathcal{U}}$ with the generalized hexagon of order 2.