Construction of the smallest Ree-Tits unital from the special linear group of degree two over the field with eight elements

Abstract: We construct the smallest Ree-Tits unital from a group of matrices that is isomorphic to the commutator group of the corresponding Ree group. The matrix description is used to determine configurations in the unital via explicit computations. Embeddings into larger Ree-Tits unitals are made explicit.