English

Generic countably infinite groups

Logic 2021-11-01 v1 General Topology Group Theory

Abstract

Countably infinite groups (with a fixed underlying set) constitute a Polish space GG with a suitable metric, hence the Baire category theorem holds in GG. We study isomorphism invariant subsets of GG, which we call group properties. We say that the generic countably infinite group is of property PP if PP is comeager in GG. We prove that every group property with the Baire property is either meager or comeager. We show that there is a comeager elementary equivalence class in GG but every isomorphism class is meager. We prove that the generic group is algebraically closed, simple, not finitely generated and not locally finite. We show that in the subspace of Abelian groups the generic group is isomorphic to the unique countable, divisible torsion group that contains every finite Abelian group. We sketch the model-theoretic setting in which many of our results can be generalized. We briefly discuss a connection with infinite games.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2110.15902,
  title  = {Generic countably infinite groups},
  author = {Márton Elekes and Boglárka Gehér and Kristóf Kanalas and Tamás Kátay and Tamás Keleti},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2110.15902},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

We have very recently become aware of the fact that another research group is working on very similar problems, see arXiv:2006.14048

R2 v1 2026-06-24T07:18:09.160Z