Anzahl theorems for trivially intersecting subspaces generating a non-singular subspace I: symplectic and hermitian forms

Abstract

In this paper, we solve a classical counting problem for non-degenerate forms of symplectic and hermitian type defined on a vector space: given a subspace $\pi$, we find the number of non-singular subspaces that are trivially intersecting with $\pi$ and span a non-singular subspace with $\pi$. Lower bounds for the quantity of such pairs where $\pi$ is non-singular were first studied in ``Glasby, Niemeyer, Praeger (Finite Fields Appl., 2022)'', which was later improved in ``Glasby, Ihringer, Mattheus (Des. Codes Cryptogr., 2023)'' and generalised in ``Glasby, Niemeyer, Praeger (Linear Algebra Appl., 2022)''. In this paper, we derive explicit formulae, which allow us to give the exact proportion and improve the known lower bounds.