Group actions on twin buildings (Q2365219)

This paper is an elaboration and generalization of part of the author's work [Twin buildings and applications to \(S\)-arithmetic groups. Lect. Notes Math. 1641 (1996; Zbl 0908.20003)]. The starting point was the question to describe a fundamental domain for the action of the group \({\mathcal G}(k[t,t^{-1}])\), where \(\mathcal G\) is a Chevalley group over a field \(k\) and \(k[t,t^{-1}]\) is the Laurent ring of polynomials over \(k\). This has applications to finiteness properties of the \(S\)-arithmetic group \({\mathcal G}(\mathbb{F}_q[t,t^{-1}])\). The author works in the framework of twin buildings. Actually not all the properties of twin buildings are needed so that the approach also works for ordinary buildings, suitably doubled. The method also yields an easier, more geometrical and more conceptual proof of a result of Soulé, namely a description of a fundamental domain for the action of \({\mathcal G}(k[t])\) on the Bruhat-Tits building of \({\mathcal G}(k((t^{-1})))\).