The Hopfian exponent of an abelian group. (Q484554)

A module is Hopfian if every surjective endomorphism is an automorphism, or equivalently, if it has no proper isomorphic factor. The Hopfian property is clearly preserved by direct summands, but never by infinite direct sums of copies of a non-zero module. It may or may not be preserved by finite direct sums of copies of a module. The authors define the Hopfian exponent \(\text{Hex}(G)\) of a module \(G\) to be the least positive integer \(k\) for which \(G^k\) is not Hopfian, and \(\text{Hex}(G)=\infty\) if there is no such \(k\); they also define a related invariant \(\text{Dex}(G)\) to be the least positive integer \(k\) for which \(G^k\) has no proper isomorphic direct summand, or \(\infty\) if there is no such \(k\). The main results of the paper concern the relationships between \(\text{Hex}(G)\), \(\text{Dex}(G)\) and properties of the endomorphism ring \(\text{End}(G)\). In particular, the authors construct for each positive integer \(n\) a torsion-free abelian group \(G\) for which \(\text{Hex}(G)=\text{Dex}(G)=n\) and groups \(G\) for which \(\text{Hex}(G)=\text{Dex}(G)=\infty\).