A new characterization of the dual polar graphs

In this paper we give a new characterization of the dual polar graphs, extending the work of Brouwer and Wilbrink on regular near polygons. Also as a consequence of our characterization we confirm a conjecture of the authors on non-bipartite distance-regular graphs with smallest eigenvalue at most $-k\mathrm{/}2$, where $k$ is the valency of the distance-regular graph, in case of $c_2\ge 3$ and $a_1=1$.