Coproducts of abelian topological groups (Q1612186)

This paper gives a detailed description of the topological groups that arise from coproducts in the category of topological Abelian groups. For a given family of topological Abelian groups \(\{A_i\}_{i \in I}\) the underlying abstract group of their coproduct is simply their coproduct in the category of Abelian groups and the latter can be realized as the (weak or restricted) direct sum \(\sum_{i \in I} A_i\). The coproduct of the topological groups \(\{A_i\}_{i \in I}\) is therefore the topological group obtained after endowing the abstract group \(\sum_{i \in I} A_i\) with the right topology (called in this paper the coproduct topology). Throughout the last 55 years, different authors have introduced different topologies on direct sums with different purposes. Most (if not all) of them are discussed in this paper and the relations between them are investigated. Of especial interest among these are \textit{S. Kaplan}'s asterisk topology [Duke Math. J. 15, 649-658 (1948; Zbl 0034.30601)] and the box topology. The author gives here a general construction from which these two topologies and the coproduct topology may be obtained. This gives a useful description of the coproduct topology that enables it to be compared with other relevant topologies on direct sums including the several ones introduced by \textit{P. J. Higgins} [J. Algebra 44, 152-199 (1977; Zbl 0398.22001)]. It is in particular analyzed when all these topologies agree. It is proved in this context that, beyond the well-known case of countable coproducts, the coproduct, box and asterisk topologies agree when all but countably many of the groups participating in the coproduct are locally prime. In the author's terminology a topological group is said to be locally prime if it has neighbourhood basis at the identity formed by neighbourhoods \(U\) such that \(x \in U\) implies \(2x \in U\). Particularly significant examples of locally prime groups are topological groups whose topology has a basis of neighbourhoods at the identity consisting of subgroups (i.e. topological groups whose topology is linear), like totally disconnected locally compact groups or topological \(P\)-groups (topological groups in which countable intersections of open sets are open). The last section of the paper is dedicated to analyze the reflexivity properties of the topological coproduct. Recall that by the dual group \(\widehat{G}\) of an Abelian topological group \(G\) the group of continuous characters (continuous homomorphisms into the unit circle) of \(G\) is usually meant equipped with the compact-open topology, and that a group is said to be reflexive if the dual group of \(\widehat{G}\) is topologically isomorphic to \(G\). Continuous characters of a direct product \(\prod A_i\) are easily identified with elements of \(\sum \widehat{A_i}\) and the asterisk topology was precisely introduced by Kaplan to give an internal description of the compact-open topology on \(\sum \widehat{A_i}\). This means that \(\sum \widehat{A_i}\) endowed with the asterisk topology \textit{is} the dual group of \(\prod A_i\). Kaplan (loc. cit.) also studied the character group of a direct sum \(\sum A_i\) to deduce that \(\widehat{\sum A_i}\) is topologically isomorphic to \(\prod{\widehat{A_i}}\) concluding therefore that reflexivity is conserved by direct products and restricted sums, provided the latter are endowed with the asterisk topology. This fact leaves little room for the reflexivity of topological coproducts; for a topological coproduct to be reflexive it indeed turns out to be necessary that the asterisk and coproduct topologies coincide. Departing from these ideas, the last theorem of the paper provides a characterization of reflexive topological coproducts of locally compact groups: the coproduct of a family of locally compact Abelian groups is reflexive if and only if all but countably many of them are discrete.