Almost completely decomposable groups with a cyclic regulating quotient (Q1903027)

An almost completely decomposable group (ACD-group) \(X\) is a torsion-free abelian group with a completely decomposable subgroup of finite index. A subgroup \(Y\) of \(X\) is regulating, if the index is minimal. Note that the index is independent on \(Y\), whereas \(X/Y\) depends on \(Y\). It is the aim of this paper to characterize those ACD-groups \(X\) with a regulating subgroup \(Y\) such that \(X/Y\) is cyclic of order \(p^n\) (CQR-groups). There is a direct decomposition \(X=X_{cl}\oplus X_{cd}\) where \(X_{cd}\) -- unique upto isomorphism -- is completely decomposable and \(X_{cl}\) -- unique upto near-isomorphism -- has no direct summands of rank one. In view of this decomposition it is assumed throughout that \(X\) is a CQR-group without summands of rank one. It turns out that these groups are of the form \(X=A+\mathbb{Z} p^{-n}a\) with \(A=\bigoplus A_\rho\), where \(\rho\) runs over the critical types of \(X\), and \(a\in A\) has a very particular form. This representation classifies \(X\) upto near-isomorphism and the particular coefficients of \(a\) lead to invariants of \(X\). This characterization also leads to a criterion for indecomposability. It is remarkable that \(X\) has a canonical decomposition into direct summands which is unique upto isomorphism. Using this decomposition it can be derived that direct summands of \(X\) are again CQR-groups without rank-1 summands. Finally \(X/B\) is characterized for every regulating subgroup \(B\) as a direct sum of particular cyclic \(p\)-groups. As a consequence nearly isomorphic CQR-groups have the same isomorphism classes of regulating quotients.