Universal groups for right-angled buildings (Q1747814)

In the paper under review, which is based on the second author's thesis [Universal groups for right-angled buildings. Ghent: Ghent University (PhD Thesis) (2017)], automorphism groups of right-angled buildings, which generalize trees, are investigated. Motivated by results on trees by \textit{M. Burger} and \textit{S. Mozes} [Publ. Math., Inst. Hautes Étud. Sci. 92, 113--150 (2000; Zbl 1007.22012)], the authors extend the notion of universal groups with a prescribed local action from trees to right-angled buildings. To achieve this tree-wall trees and (weak) legal colorings are introduced. After a careful analysis of these concepts and their properties, the authors show that the local action on a residue of the building can be extended to an element of the universal group. Furthermore, extending a corresponding result on the group of type-preserving automorphisms of a thick, semi-regular, irreducible right-angled building by \textit{P.-E. Caprace} [Fund. Math. 224, No. 1, 17--51 (2014; Zbl 1296.20031)], it is shown that the universal group \(U\) is (abstractly) simple when the right-angled building is thick, irreducible, has rank at least 2 and each of the local permutation groups is generated by its point stabilizers. When the semi-regular right-angled building \(\Delta\) is locally finite, the universal group \(U\) is compactly generated, totally disconnected and locally compact. In this case, the maximal compact open subgroups of \(U\) are exactly the stabilizers of maximal spherical residues of \(\Delta\). The authors describe the maximal compact open subgroups of \(U\) in two ways. First, \(U\) is chamber-transitive, and the stabilizer \(U_{c_0}\) of a chamber \(c_0\) of \(\Delta\) is obtained as a limit of certain iterated semidirect products (by restricting \(U_{c_0}\) onto \(n\)-balls). Second, these stabilizers are described as generalized wreath products.