Packings and Steiner systems in polar spaces

Abstract

A finite classical polar space of rank n consists of the totally isotropic subspaces of a finite vector space equipped with a nondegenerate form such that n is the maximal dimension of such a subspace. A t-Steiner system in a finite classical polar space of rank n is a collection Y of totally isotropic n-spaces such that each totally isotropic t-space is contained in exactly one member of Y . Nontrivial examples are known only for t = 1 and t = n−1. We give an almost complete classification of such t-Steiner systems, showing that such objects can only exist in some corner cases. This classification result arises from a more general result on packings in polar spaces.