Generating the inverse limit of free groups (Q2664489): Difference between revisions

From the summary: We study the relation between two uncountable groups with remarkable properties: the topological free product of infinite cyclic groups \(G\), and the inverse limit of finitely generated free groups \(\hat{F}\). The former has a canonical embedding as a proper subgroup of the latter and we examine when \(G\), together with certain naturally defined normal subgroups of \(\hat{F}\), generates the entire group \(\hat{F}\). We are interested in particular in normal subgroups \(\mathrm{Ker}_T (\hat{F}) =\bigcap \{ \mathrm{Ker}\varphi\mid \varphi\in \mathrm{hom}(\hat{F},T)\} \), where \(T\) is some finitely-presented \(n\)-slender group. Our main results state that if \(T\) is the infinite cyclic group or the free nilpotent class 2 group on 2 generators, then \(G\) and \(\mathrm{Ker}_T (\hat{F})\) generate \(\hat{F}\). On the other hand, if \(T\) is the free nilpotent class 3 group or a Baumslag-Solitar group, then the product of subgroups \(G \cdot \mathrm{Ker}_T (\hat{F})\) is a proper subgroup of \(\hat{F}\). In the last section, we provide an interesting geometric interpretation of the above results.