On the global structure of special cycles on unitary Shimura varieties

Nicolas Vandenbergen

Published 2011-10-04Version 1

In this paper, we study the reduced loci of special cycles on local models of the Shimura variety for GU(1; n-1). We explicitly compute the global structure of the reduced locus of a single special cycle, as well as of an arbitrary intersection of special cycles, in terms of Bruhat-Tits theory. Furthermore, as an application of our results, we prove the connectedness of arbitrary intersections of special cycles, as conjectured by Kudla and Rapoport.