Groups acting on buildings, operator K-theory, and Novikov's conjecture

The paper is devoted to the study of the KK-theory of Bruhat-Tits buildings. We develop a theory which is analogous to the corresponding theory for manifolds of nonpositive sectional curvature. We construct a C ^*-algebra and a Dirac element associated to any simplicial complex. In the case of buildings, we construct, moreover, a dual Dirac element and compute its KK-products with the Dirac element. As a consequence, we prove the Novikov conjecture for discrete subgroups of linear adelic groups. In our study, we develop a KK-theoretic Poincaré duality for non-Hausdorff manifolds.Dedicated to Alexander Grothendieck on his sixtieth birthday