Locally inner endomorphisms of SF-groups (Q910845)

\textit{S. N. Chernikov} [Usp. Mat. Nauk 14, No.5, 45-96 (1959; Zbl 0119.022)] had posed the question about countability of a group, all of whose Sylow subgroups are Chernikov groups, i.e. of a locally finite SF-group. Unexpectedly, \textit{R. Baer} [J. Reine Angew. Math. 239/240, 109-144 (1969; Zbl 0185.054)] answered this question negatively. He noticed that the question about countability of an SF-group G reduces to the question of existence of a nontrivial subgroup isomorphic to G itself, and that every such subgroup is the image of some locally inner endomorphism. This ideology has taken the author to the problem of characterizing those SF- groups G which are countable and without nontrivial subgroups isomorphic to G itself. The hypothesis is that such a group is the union of an ascending chain of invariant subgroups with all steps finite. This assertion is proved here for locally solvable SF-groups. The author hopes it to be true in general also as any locally finite SF-group contains a locally solvable subgroup of finite index.