A characterization of countable Butler groups (Q1070040)

The class of pure subgroups of completely decomposable torsionfree groups of finite rank was introduced and studied by \textit{M. C. R. Butler} [Proc. Lond. Math. Soc., III. Ser. 15, 680-698 (1965; Zbl 0131.025)]. Bican characterized the Butler groups as those torsionfree groups of finite rank H such that \(r_ p(H)=r(p^{\omega}H)\) for each prime p and H/B has finitely many primary components (\(\neq 0)\) for all generalized subgroups \(B\) of H. \textit{L. Bican} and \textit{L. Salce} proved [Lect. Notes Math. 1006, 171-189 (1983; Zbl 0515.20035)] that a free torsionfree group of finite rank H is a Butler group if and only if \(Bext(H;T)=0\) for all torsion groups T (Bext is the subfunctor of Ext consisting of the classes of the balanced exact sequences). This characterization is used in their work to define Butler groups of arbitrary rank. In this paper some kind of ascending chain conditions on torsionfree groups are introduced to obtain new characterizations of Butler groups of finite and countable rank, and to show that countable pure subgroups of Butler groups with linearly ordered type set are Butler groups.