A geometric approach to Mathon maximal arcs

In 1969 Denniston [3] gave a construction of maximal arcs of degree d in Desarguesian projective planes of even order q, for all d dividing q. In 2002 Mathon [8] gave a construction method generalizing the one of Denniston. We will give a new geometric approach to these maximal arcs. This will allow us to count the number of isomorphism classes of Mathon maximal arcs of degree 8 in PG ( 2 , 2 h ) , h prime.