There are many examples of non-isomorphic pairs of finitely generated abstract groups that are elementarily equivalent. We show that the situation in the category of profinite groups is different: If two finitely generated profinite groups are elementarily equivalent (as abstract groups), then they are isomorphic. The proof applies a result of Nikolov and Segal which in turn relies on the class...

A join-completion of a poset is a completion for which each element is obtainable as a supremum, or join, of elements from the original poset. It is well known that the join-completions of a poset are in one-to-one correspondence with the closure systems on the lattice of up-sets of the poset. A ∆1-completion of a poset is a completion for which, simultaneously, each element is obtainable as a ...

In this paper, we construct a q-deformation of the Witt-Burnside ring of a profinite group over a commutative ring, where q ranges over the ring of integers. When q = 1, this coincides with the Witt-Burnside ring introduced by A. Dress and C. Siebeneicher (Adv. Math. 70 (1988), 87-132). To achieve our goal we first show that there exists a q-deformation of the necklace ring of a profinite group...

For a Heyting algebra A, we show that the following conditions are equivalent: (i) A is profinite; (ii) A is finitely approximable, complete, and completely joinprime generated; (iii) A is isomorphic to the Heyting algebra Up(X) of upsets of an image-finite poset X. We also show that A is isomorphic to its profinite completion iff A is finitely approximable, complete, and the kernel of every fi...

Let G be a profinite group and let α be an automorphism of G. Then α is topologically intense if, for every closed subgroup H of G, there exists x ∈ G such that α(H) = xHx. Topologically intense automorphisms are automatically continuous, because they stabilize each open normal subgroup of the group on which they are defined. We denote by Intc(G) the group of topologically intense automorphisms...

The generalised Fitting subgroup of a finite group is the group generated by all subnormal subgroups that are either nilpotent or quasisimple. The importance of this subgroup in finite group theory stems from the fact that it always contains its own centraliser, so that any finite group is an abelian extension of a group of automorphisms of its generalised Fitting subgroup. We define a class of...

We study projective completions of affine algebraic varieties which are given by filtrations, or equivalently, ‘degree like functions’ on their rings of regular functions. For a quasifinite polynomial map P (i.e. with all fibers finite) of affine varieties, we prove that there are completions of the source that do not add points at infinity for P (i.e. in the intersection of completions of the ...