The real spectrum compactification of character varieties

Abstract

We study the real spectrum compactification of character varieties of finitely generated groups in semisimple Lie groups. This provides a compactification with good topological properties, and we interpret the boundary points in terms of actions on building-like spaces. Among the applications we give a general framework guaranteeing the existence of equivariant harmonic maps in building-like spaces.

New sections 1.6 and 1.7 in the introduction, several typos corrected