A note on weakly compact subgroups of locally quasi-convex groups (Q2636910)

Most of the duality theory of abelian topological groups takes place within so-called locally quasi-convex groups, groups having a neighbourhood basis at the identity consisting of quasi-convex sets. Recall that a subset \(A\) of an abelian topological group \( G\) is quasi-convex if for every \(x\in G\setminus A\), there exists a continuous character \(\chi\) of \(G\) that separates \(x\) and \(A\), just as the Hahn Banach theorem shows that an open convex subset \(C\) of a topological vector space \(E\) is separated from every \(x\in E\setminus C\) by some continuous linear functional. While subgroups and products of locally quasi-convex sets remain locally quasi-convex, local quasi-convexity is not easily transferred to quotients. In fact, every topological abelian group \(G\) is a quotient of some locally quasi-convex topological group, namely of the free abelian topological group on \(G\), \(A(G)\). If \(G\) is an abelian topological group and \(H\) is a subgroup of \(G\), a necessary condition for \(G/H\) to be locally quasi-convex is that \(H\) is a \textit{dually-closed} subgroup, that is, that for every \(x\notin H\), there is a continuous character \(\chi\in G^\wedge\) such that \(\chi(x)\neq 1\) but \(\chi(H)=\{1\}\). \textit{M. M. Bruguera} and \textit{E. Martín-Peinador} [Topology Appl. 72, No. 2, 101--111 (1996; Zbl 0892.43003)] proved that this condition is always fulfilled by compact subgroups, i.e. that compact subgroups are always dually closed. The main result of the present paper shows that the quotient \(G/K\) of a locally quasi-convex subgroup \(G\) by a compact subgroup \(K\) is indeed locally-quasi convex. The proof proceeds by first reducing the general theorem to the case when \(G\) is metrizable and complete and then proving that, for metrizable and complete \(G\), \(G/K\) embeds in the dual of a subgroup of \(G^\wedge\), namely in \((K^\perp)^\wedge\). Since dual groups are easily seen to be locally quasi-convex, the result follows. The same proof works when \(K\) is only assumed to be pseudocompact. The last section of the paper is devoted to show that weakly compact subgroups of locally quasi-convex groups are actually compact and therefore produce locally quasi-convex quotients as well.