Topological simplicity, commensurator super-rigidity and nonlinearities of Kac-Moody groups (appendix by P. Bonvin)

Abstract

We provide new arguments to see topological Kac-Moody groups as generalized semisimple groups over local fields: they are products of topologically simple groups and their Iwahori subgroups are the normalizers of the pro-p Sylow subgroups. We use a dynamical characterization of parabolic subgroups to prove that some countable Kac-Moody groups with Fuchsian buildings are not linear. We show for this that the linearity of a countable Kac-Moody group implies the existence of a closed embedding of the corresponding topological group in a non-Archimedean simple Lie group, thanks to a commensurator super-rigidity theorem proved in the Appendix by P. Bonvin.