Isomorphisms of Kac-Moody groups (Q2487927)

Kac-Moody groups are infinite-dimensional generalizations of Chevalley groups. The classical result in the theory of Chevalley groups says that each automorphism of a Chevalley group of irreducible type over a perfect field can be written as a product of an inner, a diagonal, a graph and a field automorphism. In the paper under review it is proved that the same statement holds for Kac-Moody groups over algebraically closed fields up to the addition of the so-called sign automorphism. This proves completely the corresponding conjecture from [\textit{V.~Kac, D.~Peterson}, ``On geometric invariant theory for infinite-dimensional groups''. Algebraic groups, Proc. Symp., Utrecht/Neth. 1986, Lect. Notes Math. 1271, 109-142 (1987; Zbl 0652.17011)], which was earlier proved under some restrictions in several special cases. The authors use Tits' definition of Kac-Moody groups in terms of the so-called twin root datum. Such a datum provides a canonical system of root subgroups in a Kac-Moody group, and the proof of the main result of the paper essentially reduces to showing that each automorphism of the group sends this canonical system onto one of its conjugates. In fact, the authors establish the latter property for all locally split twin root data and the result for Kac-Moody groups is obtained as a special case.