Common hyperbolic bases for chains of alternating or quadratic lattices

Abstract

We give a short and purely bilinear proof of the fact that two chains of $p$-elementary lattices with quadratic form or alternating bilinear form over the $p$-adic integers ore more generally over a complete discrete valuation ring have common hyperbolic bases. This fact, which is useful for the study of Bruhat-Tits buildings, has been proven before with different methods by Abramenko and Nebe and by Frisch.