The pure condition for incidence geometries

Abstract

The space of \emph{parallel redrawings} of an incidence geometry $(P,H,I)$ with an assigned set of normals is the set of points and hyperplanes in $\mathbb{R}^d$ satisfying the incidences given by $(P,H,I)$, such that the hyperplanes have the assigned normals. In 1989, Whiteley characterized the incidence geometries that have d-dimensional realizations with generic hyperplane normals such that all points and hyperplanes are distinct. However, some incidence geometries can be realized as points and hyperplanes in d-dimensional space, with the points and hyperplanes distinct, but only for specific choices of normals. Such incidence geometries are the topic of this article. In this article, we introduce a pure condition for parallel redrawings of incidence geometries, analogous to the pure condition for bar-and-joint frameworks, introduced by White and Whiteley. The d-dimensional pure condition of an incidence geometry (P,H,I) imposes a condition on the normals assigned to the hyperplanes of (P,H,I) required for d-dimensional realizations of (P,H,I) with distinct points. We use invariant theory to show that is a bracket polynomial. We will also explicitly compute the pure condition as a bracket polynomial for some examples in the plane.