On the arc component of a locally compact Abelian group (Q2642268)

The connected component of the identity of a topological group is always a closed normal subgroup, this is an easily established fact. The arc component on the other hand needs not be closed, the basic example, and in a sense universal, being the character group \(\widehat{\mathbb{Q}}\) of the group of rational numbers \(\mathbb{Q}\) (i.e. the group of all homomorphisms of \(\mathbb{Q}\) into the unit circle \(\mathbb{T}\)): here the arc component consists precisely of those characters that factor through the exponential mapping \(\exp: \mathbb{R} \to \mathbb{T}\) (those belonging to the one-parameter subgroup \(\{q\mapsto e^{2\pi i q r}\colon r\in {\mathbb R}\}\)) or, equivalently, those characters that are continuous for the Euclidean topology. It may be deduced from the above approach that the arc component \(G_a\) of a connected locally compact Abelian group \(G\) is always a dense subgroup. The main result of the present paper asserts that the character group \(\widehat{G_a}\) of \(G_a\) is topologically isomorphic to \(\widehat{G}\), indicating that \(G_a\) is rich as a dense subgroup of \(G\) and indeed \textit{determines} \(G\) (in the sense coined by \textit{W. W. Comfort, S. U. Raczkowski} and \textit{F. J. Trigos-Arrieta} [Czech. Math. J. 54, No. 2, 509--533 (2004; Zbl 1080.22500)]). The main argument consists in showing that \(\widehat{G_a}\) is discrete when \(G\) is compact and connected. The proof of this fact exploits the expression of \(G\) as a quotient of a power of \(\widehat{\mathbb{Q}}\) (obtained by dualizing the embedding of \(\widehat{G}\) in its divisible hull) and boils down to applying that compact metric groups are always determined by their dense subgroups (this was obtained independently by \textit{M. J. Chasco} [Arch. Math. 70, No. 1, 22--28 (1998; Zbl 0899.22001)] and the author [Diss. Math. 384, 113~p. (1999; Zbl 0953.22001)]) and hence that \(\widehat{\mathbb{Q}}_a\) determines \(\widehat{\mathbb{Q}}\). The author also shows that this property of arc components does not depend on arc-connectivity as arcwise connected precompact groups can have a nondiscrete dual. The last section of the paper studies under which conditions the intersection \(G_a\cap H\) of \(G_a\) with a closed subgroup \(H\) of \(G\) is dense and determines \(H\).