free products and group actions
Theorem 1.
(See Lang, Exercise 54 p. 81) Suppose are subgroups of that generate . Suppose further that acts on a set and that there are subsets , and some such that for each , the following holds for each :
- •
if , and
- •
.
Then (where denotes the free product).
Proof:Any can be written with , since the generate . Thus there is a surjective homomorphism
(since , as the coproduct
, has this universal property
). We must show is trivial. Choose as above. Then , , and so forth, so that . But . Thus , and is injective
.