Elliptic points of the Drinfeld modular groups

Structure of modular groups and generalizations; arithmetic groups (11F06) Drinfel'd modules; higher-dimensional motives, etc. (11G09) Free products of groups, free products with amalgamation, Higman-Neumann-Neumann extensions, and generalizations (20E06) Groups acting on trees (20E08) Linear algebraic groups over global fields and their integers (20G30)

Abstract: Let

K

be an algebraic function field with constant field

{m a t h b b F}_{q}

. Fix a place

i n f t y

of

K

of degree

d e l t a

and let

A

be the ring of elements of

K

that are integral outside

i n f t y

. We give an explicit description of the elliptic points for the action of the Drinfeld modular group

G = G L_{2} (A)

on the Drinfeld's upper half-plane

O m e g a

and on the Drinfeld modular curve

G! s e t m i n u s! O m e g a

. It is known that under the {it building map} elliptic points are mapped onto vertices of the {it Bruhat-Tits tree} of

G

. We show how such vertices can be determined by a simple condition on their stabilizers. Finally for the special case

d e l t a = 1

we obtain from this a surprising free product decomposition for

P G L_{2} (A)

.

Review text

In the paper under review, the authors give an explicit description for the elliptic points of the action of the Drinfeld modular group on the Drinfeld's upper-half plane and on a Drinfeld modular curve. To state the results, let \(K\) be a function field of one variable over the finite field \(\mathbb{F}_q\) of order \(q\), and let \(\infty\) be a fixed place of \(K\) of degree \(\delta.\) Let \(A\) be the subring of \(K\) consisting of all elements of \(K\) that are regular outside \(\infty.\) The completion of \(K\) with respect to \(\infty\) is denoted by \(K_\infty\) and the field \(\mathbf{C}_\infty\) denotes the completion of an algebraic closure of \(K_\infty.\) Recall that the Drinfeld upper-half plane is the set \(\Omega := \mathbf{C}_\infty \setminus K_\infty\) which plays the role analogous to the classical upper-half plane \(\mathbb{H}\). In this setting, the Drinfeld modular group \(G = \mathrm{GL}_2(A)\) acts on \(\Omega\) as a set of linear fractional transformations on \(\Omega.\) By definition, an element \(\omega\in \Omega\) is an elliptic element of \(G\) provided that the stabilizer \(G_{\omega}\) of \(\omega\) in \(G\) is non-trivial. Similar to the case of the classical modular group \(\mathrm{SL}_2(\mathbb{Z})\), a precise description of elliptic elements of \(G\) in terms of elements in the quadratic extension \(\mathbb{F}_{q^2}K/K\) is given. It follows that \(G\) has elliptic elements if and only if \(\delta\) is odd. In the case where \(\delta\) is odd, let \(\mathcal{T}\) be the Bruhat-Tits tree associated with \(\mathrm{GL}_2(K_\infty)\). Note that \(G\) inherits an action on \(\mathcal{T}\) so that the building map \(\lambda : \Omega \to \mathcal{T}\) is \(G\)-equivariant. The authors characterize the set of vertices \(v\) of \(\mathcal{T}\) which are the images of elliptic points of \(G\) under the building map. Similar description on vertices of \(G\backslash \mathcal{T}\) is also given. The authors show that a vertex \(v\) of \(\mathcal{T}\) gives rise to an isolated vertex of \(G\backslash \mathcal{T}\) if and only if \(\delta =1\) and \(v= \lambda(\omega)\) for some elliptic point \(\omega\) of \(G\). Thus, for the special case where \(\delta=1\), by applying Bass-Serre theory [\textit{J.-P. Serre}, Trees. Transl. from the French by John Stillwell. Berlin-Heidelberg-New York: Springer-Verlag (1980; Zbl 0548.20018)] the authors are able to deduce a structure theorem of \(\mathrm{PGL}_2(A)\) as a free product decomposition in terms of suitable copies of the cyclic group \(\mathbb{Z}/(q+1)\mathrm{Z}\) and some subgroup \(P\) of \(\mathrm{PGL}_2(A)\).

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