Extensions in the class of countable torsion-free Abelian groups. (Q2448974)

For a torsion-free Abelian group \(A\) the group \(\text{Ext}_{\mathbb Z}(A,B)\) is divisible for any Abelian group \(B\), and thus it is of the form of \[ \text{Ext}_{\mathbb Z}(A,B)=\bigoplus_{r_0}\mathbb Q\oplus\bigoplus_p \Bigl(\bigoplus_{r_p}\mathbb Z_{p^\infty}\Bigr) \] for some cardinals \(r_0,r_p\) (\(p\) is a prime). The main theorem (Theorem 3.2) characterizes when \(\text{Ext}_{\mathbb Z}(A,B)=0\) holds for countable torsion-free Abelian \(A\) and torsion-free Abelian \(B\) such that \(|B|<2^{\aleph_0}\). The authors prove in Theorem 4.2 that (for such groups \(A\) and \(B\)) either \(\text{Ext}_{\mathbb Z}(A,B)=0\) or \(r_0(\text{Ext}_{\mathbb Z}(A,B))=2^{\aleph_0}\). They also provide some characterizations on the \(p\)-rank in Section 5, and show examples in Section 6 where these \(p\)-ranks can occur.