Uncountable locally free groups and their group rings (Q1693069)

If all finitely generated subgroups of a non-abelian group \(G\) are free, then the group \(G\) is called locally free. The Nielsen-Schreier theorem shows that every free group is locally free. If \(G\) is a countably infinite group, then \(G\) is locally free if and only if \(G\) is an ascending union of free groups. In particular, if \(G\) is a properly ascending union of non-abelian free groups of bounded finite rank, then G is a locally free group which is not free. It is known that there exists an uncountable locally free group which is not free [\textit{G. Higman}, Proc. Lond. Math. Soc. (3) 1, 284--290 (1951; Zbl 0043.25701)]. It is also well-known, that if \(G\) is a locally free countably infinite group, then \(G\) has free countably infinite groups. In the present paper, the following results are proved. {\parindent=0.7cm\begin{itemize}\item[1)] Let \(G\) be a locally free uncountable group and \(A\) be finitely generated non-trivial subgroup of \(G\). Then, there exists a subgroup \(H\) of \(G\), whose cardinality coincides with the cardinality of \(G\) such that \(AH\) is isomorphic to the free product of the groups \(A\) and \(H\). In particular, G has a free subgroup, whose cardinality coincides with the cardinality of \(G\) ( Theorem 1.1). \item[2)] If \(G\) is a non-abelian locally free group and \(R\) is a domain with \(| R | \leq | G |\), then the group ring \(RG\) is primitive. In particular, the group ring \(KG\) is primitive for any field \(K\) (Theorem 2.5). \end{itemize}} Theorem 1.1 generalizes the main result of the author in [Int. J. Algebra Comput. 21, No. 3, 409--431 (2011; Zbl 1228.16020)].