Countably compact groups and sequential order (Q2291591)

The rich study of sequential topological groups started some decades ago. Question 7.5. of [\textit{D. Shakhmatov}, in: Recent progress in general topology II. Based on the Prague topological symposium, Prague, Czech Republic, August 19--25, 2001. Amsterdam: Elsevier. 463--484 (2002; Zbl 1029.54003)] asked whether there exists a countably compact sequential group that is not Fréchet. In [\textit{A. Shibakov}, Topology Appl. 228, 125--138 (2017; Zbl 1379.54021)], it was shown that it is consistent with respect to ZFC that the answer is negative. In this paper, the authors show that the positive answer is also consistent, thus establishing the independence. The authors use Jensen's \(\diamondsuit\) principle to construct, given an ordinal \(\alpha\leq\omega_1\), a countably compact sequential Abelian group \(G\) whose sequential order is \(\alpha\). This also answers (consistently) Question 7.4. of [\textit{D. Shakhmatov}, loc. cit.], which asks whether countably compact sequential groups of arbitrary sequential orders exist. The construction is rather long and sophisticated, and is divided into several lemmas. In the end, the authors ask if it is possible to use CH instead of \(\diamondsuit\), if it is consistent that there exists a countably compact sequential group \(G\) such that there exists a compact subspace \(K\subseteq G\) of sequential order \(\geq2\). They also ask if their construction can be made Cohen-indestructible.