Pseudocompact topological groups and their properties (Q5899770)

It is well known that arbitrary products of pseudocompact topological groups (but not, of course, of spaces) are pseudocompact, but that closed subgroups of pseudocompact groups need not be. The author shows that, if a closed normal subgroup K of a group G and the quotient group G/K are both pseudocompact, then G is pseudocompact, and the canonical map \(G\to G/K\) is z-closed. Also, an inverse limit of pseudocompact groups is pseudocompact if (i) the bonding maps are all open homomorphisms and (ii) \(Ker(p_{n+1,n})\) is pseudocompact for each n. Examples are produced to show that both (i) and (ii) are essential. A subgroup H of a group G is defined to be h-embedded if every continuous homomorphism from H to a compact group K can be extended to a continuous homomorphism of G to K. Without additional set theory, a pseudocompact, zero-dimensional group of cardinality of the continuum is constructed, containing no nontrivial convergent sequences, and every countable subgroup of which is closed and h-embedded.