Loop groups and twin buildings

DOI10.1023/A:1019603827308MaRDI QIDQ698124zbMATH OpenFDO

Authors Linus Kramer

Publication date 18 September 2002

Published in Geometriae Dedicata (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0109128

zbMATH Keywords

affine buildingbuildingsKac-Moody grouploop grouptwin buildings

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Loop groups and related constructions, group-theoretic treatment (22E67) Buildings and the geometry of diagrams (51E24) Topological nonlinear incidence structures (51H15) Differential geometry of immersions (minimal, prescribed curvature, tight, etc.) (53C42)

Abstract: We describe some buildings related to complex Kac-Moody groups. First we describe the spherical building of SLn(C) (i.e. the projective geometry PG(Cn)) and its Veronese representation. Next we recall the construction of the affine building associated to a discrete valuation on the rational function field $C(z)$. Then we describe the same building in terms of complex Laurent polynomials, and introduce the Veronese representation, which is an equivariant embedding of the building into an affine Kac-Moody algebra. Next, we introduce topological twin buildings. These buildings can be used for a proof - which is a variant of the proof by Quillen and Mitchell - of Bott periodicity which uses only topological geometry. At the end we indicate very briefly that the whole process works also for affine real almost split Kac-Moody groups.

Review text

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).

Recommendations

• On topological twin buildings and topological split Kac-Moody groups
• Codistances in buildings
• Groupes de Kac–Moody déployés sur un corps local, immeubles microaffines
• Moufang buildings and twin buildings
• Construction and automorphisms of buildings.
• Simplicity and superrigidity of twin building lattices.
• Kac-Moody groups, hovels and Littelmann paths
• 1-twinnings of buildings
• Local isometries of twin buildings.
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 5626073

Cited in

(8)

• A lightcone embedding of the twin building of a hyperbolic Kac-Moody group
• The cone topology on masures. With an appendix by Auguste Hébert (Université de Lyon)
• Kac-Moody geometry
• Homogeneous compact geometries
• Final group topologies, Kac-Moody groups and Pontryagin duality
• Fundamental groups of split real Kac-Moody groups and generalized real flag manifolds
• Mini-workshop: Infinite-dimensional Kac-Moody Lie algebras in supergravity and M theory. Abstracts from the mini-workshop held November 17--22, 2024
• Quillen's theorem on buildings and the loops on a symmetric space

This page was built for publication: Loop groups and twin buildings

Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q698124)