Classifying almost completely decomposable abelian groups (Q1340977)

The paper studies almost completely decomposable groups as extensions of a (finite rank) completely decomposable group \(A\) by a finite group \(C\). The stage is set by showing that \(\text{Ext} (C,A)\cong \Hom(C, A/eA)\) where \(e\) is a bound of \(C\), i.e. \(eC=0\). Every extension of \(A\) by \(C\) is then obtained (up to isomorphism) as a pullback \(X_ f\) where \(f\in \Hom (C, A/eA)\). In this construction it is quite possible that \(X_ f\) and \(X_ g\) are isomorphic for different maps \(f\), \(g\). An isomorphism criterion is obtained in the case when \(A\) is assumed to be a special subgroup of \(X_ f\) and \(X_ g\), namely the regulator. At the same time a weakening of isomorphism appears very naturally, called ``type- isomorphism'', and it is shown that this concept is equivalent to Lady's near-isomorphism. The classification problem up to type-isomorphism is reduced to classifying certain finite abelian groups (namely \(A/eA\)) with distinguished subgroups. This is a non-trivial problem but it is demonstrated to work efficiently in the case when \(C\) is cyclic and the critical typeset is an antichain, and in the case when there are only two critical types. The critical typeset of \(A\) is the set of types for which \(A\) has a rational direct summand of that type. The connection between type-isomorphism and isomorphism is also studied. For fixed \(A\) and \(C\), the type-isomorphism classes of groups \(X_ f\), \(f\in \Hom (C,A/ eA)\), break up into isomorphism classes all of the same size and there is a bijective correspondence between the isomorphism classes in a type-isomorphism class and a certain finite abelian group.