Compact totally disconnected Moufang buildings. (Q1762344)

By the work of \textit{J. Tits}, [Buildings of spherical types and finite \(BN\)-pairs. Lect. Notes Math. 386. Springer-Verlag (1974; Zbl 0295.20047)], it is possible to classify all spherical buildings of rank \(>3\), and all spherical buildings of rank \(2\) with the Moufang condition. However, many interesting examples of spherical buildings appear with an additional feature: they are topological buildings. For example, the boundary at infinity of a symmetric space, or a Euclidean building, is a topological spherical building. Furthermore, assuming the space is locally compact, this building will be compact. Therefore, one can wonder which spherical buildings admit a compact topology. Several authors worked on this problem in special cases, mostly when the building is connected or locally connected: see for example \textit{K.~Burns} and \textit{R.~Spatzier} [Publ. Math., Inst. Hautes Étud. Sci. 65, 5-34 (1987; Zbl 0643.53036)], and \textit{T. Grundhöfer}, \textit{N. Knarr} and \textit{L. Kramer} [Geom. Dedicata 83, No. 1-3, 1-29 (2000; Zbl 0974.51014)]. The paper under review extends these results to the general case. The authors prove that a compact infinite irreducible spherical building \(\Delta\) which is Moufang is always the boundary of a symmetric space or of a Bruhat-Tits building. Furthermore, the topology of \(\Delta\) is unique (meaning that every automorphism is continuous), except maybe for the conjugation in complex symmetric spaces.