Self-duality in the class of precompact groups (Q2390523): Difference between revisions

The fact that the only compact abelian self-dual groups are the finite ones is an elementary result in Pontryagin duality. In the paper under review this result is generalized to countably pseudocompact groups. [A topological space is said to be countably pseudocompact when every countable subset of it is contained in the pseudocompact closure of some countable set.] The proof uses a theorem by \textit{S.~Hernández} and \textit{S.~Macario} [Arch. Math. 80, No. 3, 271--283 (2003; Zbl 1025.22003)] which asserts that the character group of a countably pseudocompact group is a \(\mu\)-space if endowed with the topology of pointwise convergence. In the second part of this paper, the author shows that by contrast, there are many infinite pseudocompact self-dual groups, by constructing one with cardinality \(\kappa\) for every cardinal \(\kappa\) such that \(\kappa^{\omega}=\kappa.\) These examples are actually Boolean groups, and strongly self-dual ones (meaning that the topological group isomorphism from the group to its dual is symmetric in the natural sense). On the other hand, an interesting restriction on the class of infinite precompact self-dual groups is the fact, also proved by the author, that the cardinality and the weight of any such group must coincide.