Non-distortion of twin building lattices. (Q5961906)

This very interesting and very well written article can be seen as an analogue of [\textit{A. Lubotzky, S. Mozes} and \textit{M. S. Raghunathan}, Publ. Math., Inst. Hautes Étud. Sci. 91, 5-53 (2000; Zbl 0988.22007)] for (non-affine) twin buildings: The authors prove that the word metric of a (finitely generated) twin building lattice \(\Gamma\) [\textit{B. Rémy}, C. R. Acad. Sci., Paris, Sér. I, Math. 329, No. 6, 475-478 (1999; Zbl 0933.22029)] is quasi-isometric to the Riemannian metric of the ambient (compactly generated) product \(G_+\times G_-\) of the locally compact isometry groups of each half \(X_\varepsilon\) of the underlying twin building. In other words, the restriction of the natural metric of the product \(X_+\times X_-\) to a \(\Gamma\)-orbit is quasi-isometric to the intrinsic metric of that \(\Gamma\)-orbit. The authors say that the twin building lattice is undistorted in the ambient locally compact group. The authors also emphasize that on the other hand a non-uniform lattice in a single irreducible factor \(G_\varepsilon\) should be expected to be distorted, if the underlying building is non-affine. Examples of such lattices can be found in [\textit{L. Carbone} and \textit{H. Garland}, Math. Res. Lett. 6, No. 3-4, 439-447 (1999; Zbl 0954.22014); \textit{B. Rémy}, loc. cit.; the reviewer and \textit{B. Mühlherr}, ``Lattices from involutions of Kac-Moody groups'', Oberwolfach Rep. 5, No. 1, 139-140 (2008)]. By standard arguments (using [\textit{Y. Shalom}, Invent. Math. 141, No. 1, 1-54 (2000; Zbl 0978.22010)]), the above non-distortion result implies the integrability of the structural cocycle. The reviewer would also be very much interested in higher dimensional (non-)distortion properties of twin building lattices, similar to the observations/conjectures made in [\textit{K.-U. Bux} and \textit{K. Wortman}, Invent. Math. 167, No. 2, 355-378 (2007; Zbl 1126.20030)] on the distortion dimension of \(S\)-arithmetic groups.