On orthogonal polar spaces

Abstract

Let $\cal P$ be a non-degenerate polar space. In [I. Cardinali, L. Giuzzi, A. Pasini, "The generating rank of a polar grassmannian", Adv. Geom. 21:4 (2021), 515-539 doi:10.1515/advgeom-2021-0022 (arXiv:1906.10560)] we introduced an intrinsic parameter of $\cal P$, called the anisotropic gap, defined as the least upper bound of the lengths of the well-ordered chains of subspaces of $\cal P$ containing a frame; when $\cal P$ is orthogonal, we also defined two other parameters of $\cal P$, called the elliptic and parabolic gap, related to the universal embedding of $\cal P$. In this paper, assuming $\cal P$ is an orthogonal polar space, we prove that the elliptic and parabolic gaps can be described as intrinsic invariants of $\cal P$ without making recourse to the embedding.