A wreath product approach to classical subgroup theorems. (Q993654)

The main goal of the paper under review is to give elementary proofs of the classical subgroup theorems from combinatorial group theory: the Nielsen-Schreier Theorem (a subgroup of a free group is itself free) and the Kurosh Subgroup Theorem, which describes the subgroups of free products. The proofs are obtained via diagram chasing, exploiting the functoriality of wreath products, and work at the same time for the discrete and the profinite case. We refer to the introduction, which is exemplarily well written, for further details, and an annotated history of the context.