Baer-Specker group
Let be a non-empty set, and an abelian group. The set of all functions from to is an abelian group, with addition
defined elementwise by . The zero element
isthe function that sends all elements of into of , and thenegative of an element is a function defined by.
When , the set of natural numbers, and , as defined above is called the Baer-Specker group. Anyelement of , being a function from to ,can be expressed as an infinite sequence
, and the elementwise addition on canbe realized as componentwise addition on the sequences:
An alternativecharacterization of the Baer-Specker group is that it can beviewed as the countably infinite
direct product
of copies of:
The Baer-Specker group is an important example of a torsion-freeabelian group whose rank is infinite. It is not a free abeliangroup, but any of its countable
subgroup
is free (abelian).
References
- 1 P. A. Griffith, Infinite Abelian Group Theory, The University of Chicago Press (1970)