Tuesday, September 11
Ken Brown, Cornell University
Buildings were introduced by Jacques Tits in order to provide a unified geometric framework for understanding semisimple complex Lie groups and, later, semisimple algebraic groups over an arbitrary field. In this talk, which describes joint work with Peter Abramenko, I will sketch the proof of a geometric theorem about buildings, and I will show how it yields concrete information about groups. The geometric theorem is stated in the title. The group-theoretic consequence is that automorphism groups of buildings typically have trivial center.
I will try to keep the prerequisites to a minimum. In particular, the talk will include an introduction to buildings.
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