Reductive group actions

Abstract: In this paper, we study rationality properties of reductive group actions which are defined over an arbitrary field of characteristic zero. Thereby, we unify Luna's theory of spherical systems and Borel-Tits' theory of reductive groups. In particular, we define for any reductive group action a generalized Tits index whose main constituents are a root system and a generalization of the anisotropic kernel. The index controls to a large extent the behavior at infinity (i.e., embeddings). For k-spherical varieties (i.e., where a minimal parabolic has an open orbit) we obtain explicit (wonderful) completions of the set of rational points. For local fields this means honest compactifications generalizing the maximal Satake compactification of a symmetric space. Our main tool is a k-version of the local structure theorem.