Lines and opposition in Lie incidence geometries of exceptional type

Abstract

We characterise sets of points of exceptional Lie incidence geometries, that is, the natural geometries arising from spherical buildings of exceptional types $\mathsf{F_4}$, $\mathsf{E_6}$, $\mathsf{E_7}$, $\mathsf{E_8}$ and $\mathsf{G_2}$, that form a line using the opposition relation. With that, we obtain a classification of so-called ``geometric lines'' in many of these geometries. Furthermore, our results lead to a characterisation of geometric lines in finite exceptional Lie incidence geometries as minimal blocking sets, that is, point sets of the size of a line admitting no object opposite to all of their members, in most cases, and we classify all exceptions. As a further consequence, we obtain a characterisation of automorphisms of exceptional spherical buildings as certain opposition preserving maps.