On cancellable abelian groups (Q684005)

An abelian group \(N\) equipped with the discrete topology is called cancellable if for any two abelian topological groups \(G\) and \(H\), the product group \(G \times N \cong H \times N\) if and only if \(G \cong H\), where the symbol \(\cong\) means the topological isomorphism the between groups. In the paper under review the authors show that the additive group \(\mathbb{Z}\) of the integers is cancellable. This answers a problem raised by \textit{A. Arhangel'skii} and \textit{M. Tkachenko} in [Topological groups and related structures. Hackensack, NJ: World Scientific; Paris: Atlantis Press (2008; Zbl 1323.22001)]. The authors also show that every finitely generated abelian group is cancellable. Furthermore, they show that a divisible group \(D\) is cancellable if and only if the maximal torsion-free subgroup of \(D\) is the dirct sum of a finite number of copies of the rationals and for each prime \(p\), the \(p\)-primary component of \(D\) is the direct sum of a finite number of copies of the quasi-cyclic group \(\mathbb{Z}(p^\infty)\).