Separating linear expressions in the Stone-Čech compactification of direct sums (Q330065)

A finite sequence \((a_i)_{i=1}^m\) of elements of \(\mathbb{Z}\setminus\{0\}\) is called \textit{compressed} if \(a_i\neq a_{i+1}\) for any \(i<m\). Given a commutative group \((G,+)\) with the discrete topology, the authors consider the extension of its operation to \(\beta G\) and denote it also by \(+\) so \((\beta G,+)\) becomes a right topological semigroup. The authors prove, for every torsion-free commutative group \(G\), that if \((a_i)_{i=1}^m\) and \((b_i)_{i=1}^k\) are compressed sequences in \(\mathbb Z\setminus\{0\}\) which are not rational multiples of each other, then there do not exist idempotents \(p,q\in \beta G \setminus \{0\}\) such that \(a_1p+ \ldots +a_mp = b_1q+ \ldots +b_kq\). Some applications of this result are given for Milliken-Taylor systems corresponding to direct sums of finitely many copies of \(\mathbb Q\).