A note on the existence of non-cyclic free subgroups in division rings. (Q387599)

Nearly 40 years ago Alexander Lichtman asked whether the multiplicative group of a non-commutative division ring always contains non-cyclic free subgroups. There have been a number of partial answers to this over the years, including ones that derive stronger conclusions from stronger hypotheses. This current paper is a further contribution of this latter kind. Let \(D\) be a division ring with the property that every finitely generated subdivision ring of \(D\) is finite-dimensional over its centre. The authors prove that every non-central subnormal subgroup of the multiplicative group \(D^*\) of \(D\) (e.g. \(D^*\) itself) contains non-cyclic free subgroups. This extends work of J. Z. Gonçalves who derived the same conclusion for division rings that are finite-dimensional over their centres.