The cofinalities of the infinite dimensional classical groups (Q1911322)

If \(G\) is a group which is not finitely generated, then the cofinality \(c(G)\) of \(G\) is the least cardinal \(\lambda\) such that \(G\) can be expressed as the union of a chain of \(\lambda\) proper subgroups. It is known that \(c(\text{Sym}(\omega))\) is uncountable, but can take any uncountable regular cardinal. The main result of the present paper is that \(c(\text{Sym}(\omega))=c(GL(\omega,F))\) where \(F\) is a finite field. An analogous result is proved for the corresponding symplectic, orthogonal and unitary groups, and for the restricted general linear group \(\widehat {L}\), that is, the group of units in the ring of \(\omega \times \omega\) matrices over \(F\) in which each row or column has just finitely many non-zero entries. A key step is always to show that the group is finitely generated over the symmetric group on a basis (or part of a standard basis, in the presence of a form). The result for the general linear group makes use of that for \(\widehat{L}\), which in turn uses the fact that if \(n\geq 5\) and \((n,q-1)=1\), then there is a conjugacy class \(C\) of \(\text{SL}(n,q)\) such that for every \(g\in\text{SL}(n,q)\), there are \(a,b,c\in C\) such that \(g=abc\). This is proved in the paper by character theory. The paper also contains a proof that if \(M\) is an \(\omega\)-categorical structure then \(\text{Sym}(M)\) is finitely generated over \(\text{Aut }M\), and hence \(c(\text{Aut }M)\leq\text{Sym}(M)\).