Thursday, 9 July 2009

gr.group theory - Torsion-free and torsionless abelian groups

This question is motivated by my most spectacular answer on MO (:



Let A be a module over mathbbZ. A is said to be torsion-free if na=0 implies n=0 or a=0 for any ninmathbbZ,ainA. A is torsionless if the map phi:AtoA is injective (here means textHommathbbZ(A,mathbbZ)).



If A is finite, then torsion-free and torsionless are equivalent. In general, it is not hard to see that being torsionless implies torsion-free. On the other hand, A=mathbbQ is torsion-free but not torsionless since A=0. But the question and answers quoted above (which shows that for A=mathbbZ[x], phi is an isomorphism) raised the following:



Question: If A is a finite mathbbZ[x1,...,xd]-module, are being torsion-free and torsionless equivalent?

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