A pseudo-hyperoval of a projective space PG(3n − 1, q), q even, is a set of q n + 2 subspaces of dimension n − 1 such that any three span the whole space. We prove that a pseudohyperoval with an irreducible transitive stabilizer is elementary. We then deduce from this result a classification of the thick generalized quadrangles Q that admit a point-primitive, linetransitive automorphism group with a point-regular abelian normal subgroup. Specifically, we show that Q is flag-transitive and isomorphic to T * 2 (H), where H is either the regular hyperoval of PG(2, 4) or the Lunelli-Sce hyperoval of PG(2, 16).
(i) H acts transitively on the lines of Q;(ii) H acts transitively on the flags of Q; (iii) H acts transitively on the pseudo-hyperoval {U 1 , U 2 , . . . , U t+1 }, by conjugation.Theorem 1.1 is proved in Section 2. It implies that a classification of transitive pseudohyperovals would yield a classification of the generalized quadrangles that admit a line-transitive automorphism group with a point-regular abelian normal subgroup, and, moreover, that such generalized quadrangles are, in fact, flag-transitive. By a result of J. A. Thas [28, §4.5], if a projective space PG(3n − 1, q) contains a pseudo-hyperoval, then q = 2 f for some positive integer f . For small values of the product nf , we appeal to some existing results to classify the transitive pseudo-hyperovals of PG(3n − 1, 2 f ),
Journal of Combinatorial Designs