This paper is concerned with certain point-sets T in a projective plane PG (2, q) over GF (q) which have only three characters with respect to the lines. We assume throughout this paper that for any line l of πwhere It is easily seen that if t = 1 then T is a (q + 1)-arc, i.e. an oval; otherwise T is a (q+t, t)-arc of type (0, 2, t). Therefore (q+t, t)-arcs of type (0, 2, t) appear to be a generalization of ovals and there are interesting connections between ovals and (q + t, t)-arcs of type (0, 2, t) from various points of view. Our purpose is to investigate such particular (k, t)-arcs using some ideas of B. Segre developed for ovals in three fundamental papers [16, 17, 18]. For these papers and more recent results in this direction the reader is referred to [6], chapter 10 and [9]. General results concerning (k, n)-arcs may be found in [6], chapter 12; see also [4, 7, 20, 23].
A Besicovitch set in AG(n, q) is a set of points containing a line in every direction. The Kakeya problem is to determine the minimal size of such a set. We solve the Kakeya problem in the plane, and substantially improve the known bounds for n > 4.
We investigate finite 3-nets embedded in a projective plane over a (finite or infinite) field of any characteristic p. Such an embedding is regular when each of the three classes of the 3-net comprises concurrent lines, and irregular otherwise. It is completely irregular when no class of the 3-net consists of concurrent lines. We are interested in embeddings of 3-nets which are irregular but the lines of one class are concurrent. For an irregular embedding of a 3-net of order n 5 we prove that, if all lines from two classes are tangent to the same irreducible conic, then all lines from the third class are concurrent. We also prove the converse provided that the order n of the 3-net is smaller than p. In the complex plane, apart from a sporadic example of order n = 5 due to Stipins [7], each known irregularly embedded 3-net has the property that all its lines are tangent to a plane cubic curve. Actually, the procedure of constructing irregular 3-nets with this property works over any field. In positive characteristic, we present some more examples for n 5 and give a complete classification for n = 4.
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