On the ring of inertial endomorphisms of an abelian group. (Q480374)

Let \(A\) be an abelian group and \(\varphi\in E(A)\), where \(E(A)\) denotes the ring of all endomorphisms of \(A\). Then \(\varphi\) is called \textit{inertial} if for every subgroup \(H\) of \(A\) the quotient \(H+\varphi(H)/H\) is finite (equivalently, \(H\) is \(\varphi\)-inert). The family \(IE(A)\) of all inertial endomorphisms of \(A\) is a subring of \(E(A)\) and contains the ideal \(FE(A)\) of all finitary endomorphisms of \(A\). The authors describe \(IE(A)\) modulo \(FE(A)\). In the particular case when \(A\) has infinite torsion-free rank, \(IA(E)\) is isomorphic to \(\mathbb Z\oplus FE(A)\). This is similar to what occurs for vector spaces. Indeed, one can define inertial linear transformations using the dimension, and the authors find that if \(\varphi\) is an intertial linear transfomation of an infinte dimensional vector space, then \(\varphi\) is the sum of a scalar multiplication and a finitary linear transformation.