Subgroups of free pro-p-products

Abstract

If F is a free profinite group, it is well known that the closed subgroups of F need not be free profinite; however, if p is a prime number, every closed subgroup of a free pro-p-group is free pio-p (cf. [2, 8, 7]). In this paper we show that there is an analogous contrast regarding the closed subgroups of free products in the category of profinite groups, and the closed subgroups of free products in the category of pro-p-groups, at least for (topologically) finitely generated subgroups.