Abelian groups of continuous functions and their duals (Q1313943)

Continuing previous papers, the authors study \(C(X,A)\) for abelian groups \(A\) other than \(\mathbb{Z}\) and get more information about the group-theoretic properties of \(C(X,\mathbb{Z})\) from the topological properties of \(X\). (Here \(C(X,A)\) is the set of all continuous functions.) After establishing group-theoretic properties for \(C(X,A)\) in the second section a natural topology of \(A^*\) (for a subset \(H\) of \(A\) set \(U_ H = \{h \in A^*\mid h(H) = 0\}\) and let \(U_ H\) be neighborhood bases of 0 for finite rank subgroups \(H\) of \(A\)) is studied. Theorem. Let \(A\) be a separable torsion-free group. Then the space \(A^*\) satisfies \((2^{\aleph_ 0})^ +\)-c.c. (there exists no pairwise disjoint family of nonempty open subsets of \(X\) of cardinality \((2^{\aleph_ 0})^ +\).) For a 0-dimensional space \(X\) and an infinite cardinal \(k\) the following are equivalent: (1) There exists a free summand of \(C(X,\mathbb{Z})\) of rank \(k\); (2) there exists a subgroup of \(C(X,\mathbb{Z})^*\) isomorphic to \(\mathbb{Z}^ k\); (3) there exists a compact subset \(K\) of \(\beta_ \mathbb{N} X\) with \(w(K) \geq k\); (4) there exists a compact subset \(K\) of \(C(X,\mathbb{Z})^*\) with \(w(K) \geq k\). Special groups as \(C(\mathbb{Q},\mathbb{Z})\) and \(C(\mathbb{R} \setminus \mathbb{Q},\mathbb{Z})\) are also studied. Among several examples, it is proved that a group \(A\) such that \(A^*\) is a subgroup of \(\mathbb{Z}^ \mathbb{N}\) and \(A^*\) is not isomorphic to \(A^{***}\) exists. (Here \(A^* = \text{Hom}(A,\mathbb{Z})\) is endowed with the topology as a subspace of \(\mathbb{Z}^ A\)).