Isomorphisms of the endomorphism rings of a class of torsion-free modules

Abstract

Introduction. In [7] and [8] we have determined the isomorphisms of the endomorphism rings of two special classes of torsion-free modules. In [7] the modules were free, over principal left ideal domains, and the isomorpnism was always induced by a semi-linear transformation of the modules. In [8] the ring of scalars was a complete discrete valuation ring, but no further restriction was placed on the modules. Except for the special case when both modules are divisible, the same result holds as in [7]. In each case a key point in the argument is that a certain indecomposable direct summand can be shown to be cyclic. Even for ordinary torsion-free abelian groups, the abundance of the indecomposable ones makes it impossible to prove that isomorphism of the endomorphism rings implies isomorphism of the underlying groups. We show first that for any cardinal number c, there exist homogeneous completely decomposable groups G and H of rank c which are not isomorphic, but have isomorphic rings of endomorphisms. This makes it clear that strong restrictions must be placed on the class of groups considered if it is hoped that the ring isomorphism is to be induced by a group isomorphism. In particular, homogeneity coupled with separability or complete decomposability is not sufficient. We are, however, able to generalize the results of [7] to a class of what we call locally free modules A over principal left ideal domains F. A locally free abelian group (F is the ring of integers) is just a homogeneous separable group of null type [6, p. 208]. This latter class of groups includes the complete direct sum of infinite cyclic groups, as well as all its subgroups [4, p. 176]. For example, the set of all bounded sequences of integers is such a group. We also determine (Theorem B) which semi-linear transformations induce the same ring isomorphisms. The results are similar to the vector space case considered in [2], and apply to the endomorphism rings of locally free modules as well as the torsion-free modules of [8].