English

A Generalized Goursat Lemma

Group Theory 2015-06-10 v3 Category Theory

Abstract

In this note the usual Goursat lemma, which describes subgroups of the direct product of two groups, is generalized to describing subgroups of a direct product A1×A2×...×AnA_1\times A_2 \times...\times A_n of a finite number of groups. Other possible generalizations are discussed and applications characterizing several types of subgroups are given. Most of these applications are straightforward, while somewhat deeper applications occur in the case of profinite groups, cyclic groups, and the Sylow pp-subgroups (including infinite groups that are virtual pp-groups).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1109.0024,
  title  = {A Generalized Goursat Lemma},
  author = {Kristine Bauer and Debasis Sen and Peter Zvengrowski},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1109.0024},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

22 pages. This version is substantially changed from previous versions. We have retained the proof of Theorem 2.3, but have included attribution of this result to [Sch94]. We have substantially expanded applications to include pro-finite groups and Sylow $p$-subgroups (including infinite groups that are virtual $p$-groups), among others

R2 v1 2026-06-21T18:58:03.413Z