A Kronecker-Weyl theorem for subsets of abelian groups

Dikran Dikranjan, Dmitri Shakhmatov

Published 2010-12-19Version 1

Let N be the set of non-negative integer numbers, T the circle group and c the cardinality of the continuum. Given an abelian group G of size at most 2^c and a countable family F of infinite subsets of G, we construct "Baire many" monomorphisms p: G --> T^c such that p(E) is dense in {y in T^c : ny=0} whenever n in N, E in F, nE={0} and {x in E: mx=g} is finite for all g in G and m such that n=mk for some k in N--{1}. We apply this result to obtain an algebraic description of countable potentially dense subsets of abelian groups, thereby making a significant progress towards a solution of a problem of Markov going back to 1944. A particular case of our result yields a positive answer to a problem of Tkachenko and Yaschenko. Applications to group actions and discrete flows on T^c, diophantine approximation, Bohr topologies and Bohr compactifications are also provided.