Compactifications of S-arithmetic quotients for the projective general linear group

Abstract

Let F be a global field, and let S be a finite set of places of F containing all archimedean places. Consider the product X of the symmetric spaces and Bruhat-Tits buildings for PGL_d of the completions of F at archimedean and non-archimedean places in S, respectively. We construct compactifications of the quotient of X by S-arithmetic subgroups of PGL_d(F). The constructions make delicate use of reductive Borel-Serre spaces for archimedean places and polyhedral and seminorm compactifications at nonarchimedean places. We also briefly discuss a few potential applications of our compacifications.