A residual property of free groups (Q5919268)

If G is a group and \({\mathcal A}\) is a set of groups then G is said to be residually \({\mathcal A}\) if for each non-trivial element \(g\in G\) there is a homomorphism from G onto a group in \({\mathcal A}\) which does not map g to 1. A question due to Yu. M. Gorchakov asks the following: if F is a free group of rank greater than 1, and if \({\mathcal S}\) is an infinite collection of pairwise non-isomorphic non-abelian finite simple groups, then is F residually \({\mathcal S}?\) A considerable amount of work has been done on this question. The author considers the situation when \({\mathcal S}\) is an infinite collection of projective special linear groups (of dimension at least 2) over finite fields, and he proves that in this case F is indeed residually \({\mathcal S}\). Several partial results concerning this case have previously been obtained [\textit{Yu. M. Gorchakov} and \textit{V. M. Levchuk}, Algebra Logika 9, 415-421 (1970; Zbl 0221.20034); \textit{R. A. Katz} and \textit{W. Magnus}, Commun. Pure Appl. Math. 22, 1-13 (1969; Zbl 0157.052); \textit{V. M. Levchuk}, in Semin. `Algebraic Systems' 3, 71-93 (1970; Zbl 0251.20049); \textit{A. Lubotsky}, Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 98, 583-585 (1986; Zbl 0632.20020); \textit{A. Peluso}, Commun. Pure Appl. Math. 19, 435-437 (1966; Zbl 0145.246); \textit{S. J. Pride}, Pac. J. Math. 43, 725-733 (1972; Zbl 0242.20031)].