Epimorphisms of generalized polygons B: The octagons

Abstract

This is the second part of our study of epimorphisms with source a thick generalized $m$-gon and target a thin generalized $m$-gon. We classify the case $m = 8$ when the polygons are finite (in the first part [15] we handled the cases $m = 3, 4$ and $6$). Then we show that the infinite case is very different, and construct examples which strongly differ from the finite case. A number of general structure theorems are also obtained, and we also take a look at the infinite case for general gonality.