Loop groups and twin buildings (Q698124)

The author considers some buildings related to complex Kac-Moody groups. After a brief introduction to buildings, he describes the spherical building \(\Delta(\mathbb{C}^n)\) obtained from \((n-1)\)-dimensional complex projective space in terms of the unitary group \(SU(n)\). The geometric realization \(|\Delta(\mathbb{C}^n)|\) of the simplicial complex \(\Delta(\mathbb{C}^n)\) is endowed with a natural topology inspired by \textit{N. Knarr} [Forum Math. 2, No. 6, 603-612 (1990; Zbl 0711.51002)]; with this topology, \(|\Delta(\mathbb{C}^n)|\) turns out to be homeomorphic to the sphere \(\mathbb{S}^{n^2- 2}\). The rational function field \(\mathbb{C}(z)\) with its discrete valuation allows to construct an affine building of type \(\widetilde A_{n-1}\) in terms of lattices in the vector space \(\mathbb{C}(z)^n\). Replacing \(\mathbb{C}(z)\) by its subring \(\mathbb{C}[z, 1/z]\) of Laurent polynomials leads to a twin building in the sense of Ronan and Tits [cf. \textit{J. Tits}, Lond. Math. Soc. Lect. Note Ser. 165, 249-286 (1992; Zbl 0851.22023)]. Loop groups, like the group \(L_{\text{alg}}SL_n\mathbb{C}\) of all algebraic loops in \(SL_n\mathbb{C}\), have a natural geometric description in this twin building. The author proposes a definition of topological twin buildings (this extends the notion of a topological projective space and of a topological generalized polygon), and he shows that the twin building obtained from \(\mathbb{C}[z, 1/z]\) is a topological twin building. Studying the Knarr topology on each half of the twin building and using Quillen's space of special paths leads to a proof of the unitary Bott periodicity (and of the other versions of Bott periodicity, as indicated at the end).