Complete reducibility: Variations on a theme of Serre

Abstract

In this note, we unify and extend various concepts in the area of $G$-complete reducibility, where $G$ is a reductive algebraic group. By results of Serre and Bate--Martin--Röhrle, the usual notion of $G$-complete reducibility can be re-framed as a property of an action of a group on the spherical building of the identity component of $G$. We show that other variations of this notion, such as relative complete reducibility and $\sigma$-complete reducibility, can also be viewed as special cases of this building-theoretic definition, and hence a number of results from these areas are special cases of more general properties.

10 pages; v2 small changes; v3 minimal changes; to appear in Manuscripta Math