Infinitary axiomatizability of slender and cotorsion-free groups (Q1840642)

The paper continues earlier work by \textit{P. C. Eklof} [``Infinitary equivalence of abelian groups'', Fundam. Math. 81, 305--314 (1974; Zbl 0327.02050)] in which he characterizes strongly \(\aleph_1\)-free groups as exactly those abelian groups which are \(L_{\infty \omega_1}\)-equivalent to free abelian groups. The authors show that the class of slender abelian groups and the class of cotorsion-free abelian groups respectively are axiomatizable in the logics \(L_{\infty \omega_1}\) and \(L_{\infty \omega}\) respectively. Thus \(\mathbb Z^\omega\) is not \(L_{\infty \omega_1}\)-equivalent to any slender groups. This strengthens the old result that \(\mathbb Z^\omega\) is not freee in another interesting direction.