Maps between buildings that preserve a given Weyl distance. (Q1890442)

\textit{E. Govaert} and the second author [Beitr. Algebra Geom. 43, 89--110 (2002; Zbl 1009.51006), and Beitr. Algebra Geom. 43, No. 2, 303--324 (2002; Zbl 1023.51004)] showed that certain surjective maps between the point sets or line sets (or both) of two generalized \(n\)-gons that preserve one fixed distance can be extended to isomorphisms between the respective \(n\)-gons. In the paper under review the authors investigate surjective maps between the sets of chambers of thick buildings that preserve a fixed distance and similarly ask under what conditions such a map extends to an isomorphism between the buildings. In abridged form the result obtained is as follows. Let \(\Delta\) and \(\Delta'\) be two thick buildings of type \((W,S)\) with distance functions \(\delta\) and \(\delta'\) and let \(w\in W\) be arbitrary. Suppose that \(\varphi:{\mathcal C}(\Delta)\to {\mathcal C}(\Delta')\) is a surjective map with the additional property that \(\delta(C,D)=w\) if and only if \(\delta'(\varphi(C),\varphi(D))=w\) for alle chambers \(C\) and \(D\) of \(\Delta\). Then \(\varphi\) is a bijection and both \(\varphi\) and its inverse preserve \(S(w)\)-adjacency of chambers where \(S(w)\) is the set of all \(s\in S\) that occur in some reduced expression of \(w\). In particular, if \(S(w)=S\), then \(\varphi\) and its inverse preserve adjacency of chambers. If in addition \(w\) has a unique reduced expression with respect to \(S\), then \(\varphi\) induces an isometry (type preserving isomorphism) between \(\Delta\) and \(\Delta'\). In case \((W,S)\) is 2-spherical there is a permutation \(\theta:S\to S\) such that two chambers \(C,D\) of \(\Delta\) are \(s\)-adjacent if and only if their images \(\varphi(C),\varphi(D)\) are \(\theta(s)\)-adjacent. The authors further provide counterexamples which show that the condition \(S(w)=S\) or 2-spherical cannot be dropped in the corollaries of their main result. The crucial step in the proof of their results is the verification that \(S_1(w)\)-adjacency is preserved where \(S_1(w)=\{s\in S~| ~l(sw)<l(w)\}\) and \(w\in W\) is arbitrary. For this a characterization of \(S_1(w)\)-adjacency in a thick building \(\Delta\) of type \((W,S)\) is given which generalizes one obtained by the authors [Ann. Comb. 4, 125--137 (2000; Zbl 0961.51011)] for spherical buildings but new ideas are used to replace special properties of oppositon that were used there: Three different chambers \(C\), \(D\), \(E\) of \(\Delta\) are pairwise \(s\)-adjacent for some \(s\) in \(S_1(w)\) if and only if for any chamber \(X\in{\mathcal C}(\Delta)\) the number of chambers \(Y\in\{C,D,E\}\) such that \(\delta(Y,X)=w\) is not equal to 1.