Duality for almost completely decomposable groups. (Q926854)

The authors study the class of almost completely decomposable groups which are a special case of finite rank Butler groups. Recall that a completely decomposable group is a direct sum of copies of subgroups of the rational numbers. An almost completely decomposable group (acd group) is a torsion-free Abelian finite extension of a completely decomposable group of finite rank. Thus any almost completely decomposable group contains a finite rank completely decomposable group with finite index. Similarly, such groups can also be embedded in a completely decomposable group of finite rank with finite corresponding quotient. While the completely decomposable groups are classified, a full understanding of the almost completely decomposable groups is beyond reach. The regulating and the co-regulating index is one tool to study acd groups. In section 2 the authors give properties of those regulating indices and prepare the ground for the later sections. The heart of the paper is section 4 where the duality for almost completely decomposable groups is established. The authors use classical Warfield duality and Butler duality to obtain this new duality that enables the authors to prove classification results for certain classes of acd groups that are dual to known results from the literature. -- A very nice and well-written paper that provides much information about the class of acd groups.