The Steinberg torus of a Weyl group as a module over the Coxeter complex

Associated to each irreducible crystallographic root system $\Phi$, there is a certain cell complex structure on the torus obtained as the quotient of the ambient space by the coroot lattice of $\Phi$. This is the Steinberg torus. A main goal of this paper is to exhibit a module structure on (the set of faces of) this complex over the (set of faces of the) Coxeter complex of $\Phi$. The latter is a monoid under the Tits product of faces. The module structure is obtained from geometric considerations involving affine hyperplane arrangements. As a consequence, a module structure is obtained on the space spanned by affine descent classes of a Weyl group, over the space spanned by ordinary descent classes. The latter constitute a subalgebra of the group algebra, the classical descent algebra of Solomon. We provide combinatorial models for the module of faces when $\Phi$ is of type $A$ or $C$.