The modular counterparts of Cayley's hyperdeterminants

Let H be a hypersurface of degree m in PG(n, q), q = ph, p prime. (1) If m < n + 1, H has 1 (mod p) points. (2) If m = n + 1, H has 1 (mod p) points ⇔ Hp−1 has no term We show some applications, including the generalised Hasse invariant for hypersurfaces of degree n + 1 in PG(n, F), various porperties of finite projective spaces, and in particular a p-modular invariant detp of any (n + 1)r+2 = (n + 1)×…×(n + 1) array on hypercube A over a field characteristic p. This invariant is multiplicative in that detp(AB) = detp(B), whenever the product (or convolution of the two arrays A and B is defined, and both arrays are not 1-dimensional vectors. (If A is (n + 1)r+2 and B is (n + 1)s+2, then AB is (n + 1)r+s+2.) The geometrical meaning of the invariant is that over finite fields of characteristic p the number of projections of A from r + 1 points in any given r + 1 directions of the array to a non-zero point in the final direction is 0 (mod p). Equivalently, the number of projections of A from r points in any given r directions to a non-singular (n + 1)2 matrix is 0 (mod p). Historical aspects of invariant theory and connections with Cayley's hyperdeterminant Det for characteristic 0 fields are mentioned.