Groups of Projectivities and Levi Subgroups in Spherical Buildings of Simply Laced Type

Abstract

We introduce the special and general projectivity groups attached to a simplex $F$ of a thick irreducible spherical building of simply laced type. If the residue of $F$ is irreducible, we determine the permutation group of both projectivity groups of $F$, acting on the residue of $F$ and show that the special projectivity group determines the precise action of the Levi subgroup of a parabolic subgroup on the corresponding residue. This reveals three special cases for the exceptional types ${\mathsf{E}}_6,{\mathsf{E}}_7,{\mathsf{E}}_8$. Furthermore, we establish a general diagrammatic rule to decide when exactly the special and general projectivity groups of $F$ coincide.

Added an algebraic approach, see section 8.1. This made the geometric approach for E_8 obsolete, and it has been removed. Added a generic connectivity theorem for spherical buildings, see section 2.6. Added Lemma 2.3 to clarify the proof of Main Theorem A