Isomorphisms of Kac-Moody groups which preserve bounded subgroups. (Q850070)

The authors [Invent. Math. 161, No. 2, 361-388 (2005; Zbl 1069.22008)] showed that each automorphism of a Kac-Moody group over an algebraically closed field of characteristic 0 can be written as a product of an inner, a diagonal, a graph, a field and a sign automorphism. In the paper under review they continue their investigation of the automorphism and isomorphism problem for Kac-Moody groups and extend their result to automorphisms of Kac-Moody groups \(G\) over fields of cardinality at least 4 which preserve the set of bounded subgroups of \(G\), that is, subgroups contained in the intersection of two finite-type parabolic subgroups of opposite signs. Throughout the paper Tits' description of Kac-Moody groups in terms of twin root data is used. A group endowed with a twin root datum naturally acts on an associated twin building and crucial use is made of the theory of twin buildings and their combinatorial properties. The main result is as follows. Let \(\mathcal D=(G,(U_\alpha)_{\alpha\in\Phi})\) and \(\mathcal D'=(G',(U'_{\alpha'})_{\alpha'\in\Phi'})\) be two twin root data associated with two Kac-Moody groups of non-spherical type over fields of cardinality at least 4 and let \(\xi\colon G\to G'\) be a group isomorphism which maps bounded subgroups of \(G\) to bounded subgroups of \(G'\). Then \(\xi\) induces an isomorphism of \(\mathcal D\) to \(\mathcal D'\). The condition on the cardinality of the fields guarantees some technical conditions, that root groups \(U_\alpha\) are nilpotent, that the subgroups \(L_\alpha=\langle U_\alpha,U_{-\alpha}\rangle\) are perfect and that the normalizers of both \(U_\alpha\) and \(U_{-\alpha}\) fix only \(U_\alpha\) and \(U_{-\alpha}\) in the conjugacy class of \(U_\alpha\) in \(L_\alpha\). The key steps in the proof are a detailed and careful analysis of the Levi decomposition of the intersection of two parabolic subgroups of opposite signs in a group with a twin root datum and a classification of maximal bounded subgroups. It is shown that the latter almost always coincide with Levi factors of maximal parabolic subgroups of finite type. As a consequence the isomorphism problem can be reduced to one for groups of finite type and classical results can be applied. As a corollary the authors obtain the above mentioned description of automorphisms of Kac-Moody groups. Furthermore, it is shown that a Kac-Moody group \(G\) over a field \(\mathbb{K}\) is finitely generated if and only if \(\mathbb{K}\) is finite. In this case a subgroup is bounded if and only if it is finite. Hence the assumption on bounded subgroups may be dropped in case the base fields are finite.