Near abelian profinite groups (Q2260236)

The paper is devoted to the study of near abelian compact \(p\)-groups and to their connection with quasi-Hamiltonian compact groups. We recall that a compact group is called \textit{quasi-Hamiltonian} if every pair of compact subgroups commutes setwise. Furthermore, let \(p\) be a prime. A \textit{compact \(p\)-group} is a topological group that is a projective limit of finite \(p\)-groups. A compact \(p\)-group \(G\) is called \textit{near abelian} if it contains a closed normal abelian subgroup \(A\) such that \(G/A\) is monothetic (i.e., \(G/A\) has a dense cyclic subgroup) and that every closed subgroup of \(A\) is normal in \(G\). The paper provides comprehensive and detailed information on the structure of near abelian compact \(p\)-groups, using powerful tools from the structure theory of compact groups (e.g., actions of compact groups on compact abelian \(p\)-groups, the Mayer-Vietoris formalism, Pontryagin duality, projective covers of compact abelian groups). There are proved two main structure theorems of near abelian compact \(p\)-groups. While the first one is a splitting result, involving semidirect products, the second one is based on the construction of universal near abelian \(p\)-groups. By proving that near abelian compact \(p\)-groups are stable under the formation of projective limits and invoking earlier results by Iwasawa and Kümmich, the authors show that every quasi-Hamiltonian compact \(p\)-group is near abelian. If \(p\neq 2\) then the second structure theorem of near abelian compact \(p\)-groups yields that the converse of the previous statement is also valid, i.e., that every near abelian compact \(p\)-group (\(p\neq 2\)) is quasi-Hamiltonian. It is emphasized that the class of near abelian compact 2-groups is properly larger than the class of quasi-Hamiltonian compact 2-groups. Near abelian compact 2-groups that are not quasi-Hamiltonian are called \textit{nonstandard}. There is proved also a result on the structure of compact nonstandard near abelian 2-groups. These structure theorems finally lead to a classification of quasi-Hamiltonian compact \(p\)-groups. The last section of the paper deals with a detailed history of quasi-Hamiltonian groups.