The flat closing problem for buildings (Q470711)

The author proves that every closed, cocompact subgroup of the group of type preserving automorphisms of a locally finite building contains a discrete free abelian group of rank \(d\), where \(d\) is the dimension of a maximal flat in the building. The proof uses the notion of a strongly regular hyperbolic automorphism of a Euclidean building. The main result contains a partial solution of Gromov's flat closing problem. It asks if given a proper \(CAT(0)\)-space and a discrete group \(\Gamma\) which acts properly, isometrically and cocompactly on \(X\), does then \(\Gamma\) contain a copy of \(\mathbb{Z}^d\) if \(X\) contains a \(d\)-flat. Another motivation for the main result was the following result of Prasad and Raghunathan: Every lattice in a semisimple real Lie group of rank \(r\) contains a free abelian group of rank \(r\).