Non-discrete affine buildings and convexity

DOI10.1016/J.AIM.2011.01.019MaRDI QIDQ531794zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Publication date 20 April 2011

Published in Advances in Mathematics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/0906.4925

\(\Lambda\)-metric spaces affine buildings BN-pairs combinatorics convexity retractions

Groups with a (BN)-pair; buildings (20E42) Geometric group theory (20F65) Buildings and the geometry of diagrams (51E24)

Abstract: Affine buildings are in a certain sense analogs of symmetric spaces. It is therefore natural to try to find analogs of results for symmetric spaces in the theory of buildings. In this paper we prove a version of Kostant's convexity theorem for thick non-discrete affine buildings. Kostant proves that the image of a certain orbit of a point

x

in a symmetric space under a projection onto a maximal flat is the convex hull of the Weyl group orbit of

x

. We obtain the same result for a projection of a certain orbit of a point in an affine building to an apartment. The methods we use are mostly borrowed from metric geometry. Our proof makes no appeal to the automorphism group of the building. However the final result has an interesting application for groups acting nicely on non-discrete buildings, such as groups admitting a root datum with non-discrete valuation. Along the proofs we obtain that segments are contained in apartments and that certain retractions onto apartments are distance diminishing.

Review text

The premise of this paper is that affine buildings are in many ways similar to symmetric spaces, so one might expect results which are true for symmetric spaces to have analogues in affine buildings. The author explores in particular a version of Kostant's convexity theorem for symmetric spaces, see \textit{B. Kostant} [Ann. Sci. Éc. Norm. Supér. (4) 6, 413--455 (1973; Zbl 0293.22019)]. First recall Kostant's result in the case that \(G\) is a non-compact semisimple Lie group with Iwasawa decomposition \(G=UTK\). By taking left cosets, the subgroup \(T\) corresponds to a maximal flat in the symmetric space \(G/K\). For the purposes of this review, we abuse notation and write \(T/K\) for this maximal flat. Let \(\overline{W}\) be the spherical Weyl group acting on \(T/K\); then for any \(x \in T/K\), the image of the orbit \(K\cdot x\) in \(G/K\) under the Iwasawa projection onto \(T/K\) is equal to the convex hull of the orbit \(\overline{W}\cdot x\) in \(T/K\). This result can be interpreted in the group \(G\) in terms of the intersection of certain double cosets: given \(b,b' \in T\), the intersection \(KbK \cap Ub'K\) is non-empty if and only if \(b'K\) is contained in the convex hull of \(bK\) in \(T/K\). In order to translate this result into the setting of affine buildings, the author first recalls the general definition of a generalized affine building: we have a set \(X\) together with an atlas of maps \(\mathcal{A}\). Each \(f \in \mathcal{A}\) is an injective map from a fixed model apartment \(\mathbb{A}\) to \(X\), and the images \(f(\mathbb{A})\) are called apartments. There is an affine Weyl group \(W\) acting on \(\mathbb{A}\), and the stabilizer of \(0 \in \mathbb{A}\) is a spherical Weyl group \(\overline{W}\). In this situation there are two different retractions \(r\) and \(\rho\) of \(X\) onto a given apartment \(A\), and there is also a notion of the convex hull conv\((S)\) of a subset \(S\) of \(A\). Here \(\rho\) plays the role of the Iwasawa projection, and the projection \(r\) is set up so that given \(x \in A\) the inverse image \(r^{-1}(\overline{W}\cdot x)\) plays the role of the orbit \(K\cdot x\). The main result of the paper is as follows: Let \((X,\mathcal{A})\) be a thick generalized affine building whose Weyl group \(W\) acts transitively on the model apartment \(\mathbb{A}\). Let \(A\) be an apartment of \(X\) and \(x\in A\), then \(\rho(r^{-1}(\overline{W}\cdot x)) =\) conv\((\overline{W}\cdot x)\). Translating this result back to the setting of a group \(G\) acting nicely on a affine building, the author also recovers a double coset result analogous to Kostant's.

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