Covering group theory for locally compact groups (Q5939839)

In the first part of this paper [ibid. 114, 141-186 (2001)] the authors introduced a concept of ``coverable'' topological groups, not requiring any form of local simple connectivity, such that the natural homomorphism from a certain topological group \(G\), which can be associated to any topological group \(\overline G\) in a natural way, into \(\overline G\) is an open epimorphism with central and prodiscrete kernel. In this paper coverable locally compact groups are characterized. As an application one obtains that the classical covering group theories of Poincaré and Chevalley, as well as the variants due to Tits and Hofmann-Morris, are all equivalent for locally compact groups. Furthermore an inverse sequence of locally compact groups is indicated, whose bonding homomorphisms are open surjections with discrete kernel, such that the natural projections from the inverse limit are not surjective. An earlier such example of \textit{G. Higman} and \textit{A. H. Stone} [J. Lond. Math. Soc. 29, 233-236 (1954; Zbl 0055.02503)] deals with infinite-dimensional vector spaces (being far from locally compact).