Thursday, 7 June 2007

gr.group theory - When does a subgroup H of a group G have a complement in G?

A lot can be said in the finitely generated abelian case, just by using the structure theorem.



Call a group transversal if every subgroup has a complement; non-transversal of it has proper, nontrivial subgroups, none of which has a complement; and semi-transversal if it is not transversal but some proper, nontrivial subgroup has a complement.



Take a finite abelian group G=mathbbZ/p1e1mathbbZtimesldotstimesmathbbZ/pkekmathbbZ with rgeq0, distinct primes p1,ldots,pk and eigeq1.



Then G is transversal when ei=1 for all i, semi-transversal when k>1 and ei>1 for some i, and non-transversal when k=1 and e1>1.



For an infinite finitely generated abelian group G, G is non-transversal if G=mathbbZ, and semi-transversal otherwise.



Given a finitely generated abelian group G and SsubseteqG, call S independent if 0notinS and for all x1,ldots,xkinS, r1,ldots,rkinmathbbZ, we have that sumi=1krixi=0 implies rixi=0 for all i. Call S a basis of G if it is independent and G=left<Sright>.



Then if HleqG, H has a complement if and only if H has a basis that can be expanded to a basis of G. If S is a basis for H and SsubseteqT for some basis T of G, then the complement of H is left<TbackslashSright>.



So if G is a vector space over mathbbZ/pmathbbZ then any subgroup has a complement, since any subspace has a basis that can be completed to the whole space. My definition of independence is the same as linear independence.



If G is a free module over mathbbZ/pnmathbbZ then my definition of independence is weaker than linear independence. I would like to say that HleqG has a complement if and only if it has a module basis, but I can't prove the reverse direction of this.



I know less about the divisible abelian case, except that if G is a divisible abelian group then saying that HleqG has a complement is the same as saying that H is divisible. In particular mathbbQ and the Prufer p-group mathbbZ(pinfty) are both non-transversal.

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