Topological groups with invariant linear spans

Abstract

Given a topological group $G$ that can be embedded as a topological subgroup into some topological vector space (over the field of reals) we say that $G$ has invariant linear span if all linear spans of $G$ under arbitrary embeddings into topological vector spaces are isomorphic as topological vector spaces. For an arbitrary set $A$ let $\mathbb{Z}^{(A)}$ be the direct sum of $|A|$-many copies of the discrete group of integers endowed with the Tychonoff product topology. We show that the topological group $\mathbb{Z}^{(A)}$ has invariant linear span. This answers a question of D. Dikranjan et al. in positive. We prove that given a non-discrete sequential space $X$, the free abelian topological group $A(X)$ over $X$ is an example of a topological group that embeds into a topological vector space but does not have invariant linear span.