Related papers: Tits Geometry and Positive Curvature

An axiomatic characterization of buildings of type $\CC_3$ due to Tits is used to prove that any cohomogeneity two polar action of type $\CC_3$ on a positively curved simply connected manifold is equivariantly diffeomorphic to a polar…

We classify compact 2-connected homogeneous spaces with the same rational cohomology as a product of spheres. This classification relies on spectral sequences, homotopy theory, and representation theory. We then apply this classification to…

We study geodesically complete and locally compact Hadamard spaces X whose Tits boundary is a connected irreducible spherical building. We show that X is symmetric iff complete geodesics in X do not branch and a Euclidean building…

From the Lytchak's result for polar foliations on an irreducible simply connected symmetric space $G/K$ of compact type and rank greater than one, we can derive that there exists no equifocal submanifold with non-flat section whose…

A classification of homogeneous compact Tits geometries of irreducible spherical type, with connected panels and admitting a compact flag-transitive automorphism group acting continuously on the geometry, has been obtained by Kramer and…

Non-positively curved spaces admitting a cocompact isometric action of an amenable group are investigated. A classification is established under the assumption that there is no global fixed point at infinity under the full isometry group.…

Suppose that \Delta, \Delta' are two buildings each arising from a semisimpe algebraic group over a field, a topological field in the former case, and that for both the buildings the Coxeter diagram has no isolated nodes. We give conditions…

We prove the following rank rigidity result for proper CAT(0) spaces with one-dimensional Tits boundaries: Let $\Gamma$ be a group acting properly discontinuously, cocompactly, and by isometries on such a space $X$. If the Tits diameter of…

We develop the basic topological properties of compact polygons, i.e. of compact topological Tits buildings of rank two. It is proved that the Coxeter diagram of such a building is always crystallographic, that is, compact connected n-gons…

We prove that, for every Coxeter diagram $D$ with no rank $3$ residues of spherical type and such that $D$ has not only edges labelled by $2$, the space of countable (Tits) buildings of type $D$ is Borel complete, that is, classifying…

This is the second of two papers but has been written so as to have minimal dependence on the first paper (which is also on this archive). Let G be a group and let M be a CAT(0) proper metric space (e.g. a simply connected complete…

We prove a purely topological characterization of the Moufang property for disconnected compact polygons in terms of convergence groups. As a consequence, we recover the fact that a locally finite thick affine building of rank 3 is a…

Let $M$ be complete nonpositively curved Riemannian manifold of finite volume whose fundamental group $\Gamma$ does not contain a finite index subgroup which is a product of infinite groups. We show that the universal cover $\tilde M$ is a…

We show that a closed simply connected 8-manifold (9-manifold) of positive sectional curvature on which a 3-torus (4-torus) acts isometrically is homeomorphic to a sphere, a complex projective space or a quaternionic projective plane…

Let (W,S) be a Coxeter system of finite rank (ie |S| is finite) and let A be the associated Coxeter (or Davis) complex. We study chains of pairwise parallel walls in A using Tits' bilinear form associated to the standard root system of…

We investigate CAT(0) metric spaces whose associated Tits boundary is compact. Prominent examples of such spaces are of course the euclidean ones. However there exist non trivial geodesically complete CAT(0) spaces with compact Tits…

The investigation into large families of non-opposite flags in finite spherical buildings has been a recent addition to a long line of research in extremal combinatorics, extending classical results in vector and polar spaces. This line of…

In this paper we give a geometric construction of the Borel equivariant (co)homology for spaces with a $G$-action, where $G$ is a compact Lie group with the property that the adjoint representation is orientable. A nice feature of these…

Let M be a closed simply connected n-manifold of positive sectional curvature. We determine its homeomorphism or homotopic type if M also admits an isometric elementary p-group action of large rank. Our main results are: There exists a…

We show that a locally symmetric space of noncompact type and with finite volume is quasi-isometric to the euclidean cone over a finite simplicial complex. A detailed analysis of metric properties yields a proof of a conjecture of Siegel.