A Lightcone Embedding of the Twin Building of a Hyperbolic Kac-Moody   Group
  Let A be a symmetrizable hyperbolic generalized Cartan matrix with Kac-Moody algebra g = g(A) and (adjoint) Kac-Moody group G = G(A)=$\langle\exp(ad(t e_i)), \exp(ad(t f_i)) \,|\, t\in C\rangle$ where $e_i$ and $f_i$ are the simple root vectors. Let $(B^+, B^-, N)$ be the twin BN-pair naturally associated to G and let $(\mathcal B^+,\mathcal B^-)$ be the corresponding twin building with Weyl group W and natural G-action, which respects the usual W-valued distance and codistance functions. This work connects the twin building of G and the Kac-Moody algebra g in a new geometrical way. The Cartan-Chevalley involution, $\omega$, of g has fixed point real subalgebra, k, the 'compact' (unitary) real form of g, and k contains the compact Cartan t = k $\cap$ h. We show that a real bilinear form $(\cdot,\cdot)$ is Lorentzian with signatures $(1, \infty)$ on k, and $(1, n -1)$ on t. We define $\{x\in {\rm k} \,|\, (x, x) \leq 0\}$ to be the lightcone of k, and similarly for t. Let K be the compact (unitary) real form of G, that is, the fixed point subgroup of the lifting of $\omega$ to G. We construct a K-equivariant embedding of the twin building of G into the lightcone of the compact real form k of g. Our embedding gives a geometric model of part of the twin building, where each half consists of infinitely many copies of a W-tessellated hyperbolic space glued together along hyperplanes of the faces. Locally, at each such face, we find an $SU(2)$-orbit of chambers stabilized by $U(1)$ which is thus parametrized by a Riemann sphere $SU(2)/U(1)\cong S^2$. For n = 2 the twin building is a twin tree. In this case, we construct our embedding explicitly and we describe the action of the real root groups on the fundamental twin apartment. We also construct a spherical twin building at infinity, and construct an embedding of it into the set of rays on the boundary of the lightcone. 
Lisa Carbone, Alex J. Feingold and Walter Freyn
math.GR math.RT