The free topological group over the rationals

Abstract

In this paper we investigate the topological structure of the Graev free topological group over the rationals. We show that this free group fails to be a k-space and fails to carry the weak topology generated by its subspaces of words of length less than or equal to n. As tools in this investigation we establish some properties of net convergence in free groups and also some properties of certain canonical maps which are closely related to the topological structure of free groups.