We classify all possible JSJ decompositions of doubles of free groups of rank two, and we also compute the Makanin–Razborov diagram of a particular double of a free group and deduce that in general limit groups are not freely subgroup separable.

We introduce the class of partially invertible modules and show that it is an inverse category which we call the Picard inverse category. We use this category to generalize the classical construction of crossed products to, what we call, generalized epsilon-crossed products and show that these coincide with the class of epsilon-strongly groupoid-graded rings. We then use generalized epsilon-crossed groupoid products to obtain a generalization, from the group-graded situation to the groupoid-graded case, of the bijection from a certain second cohomology group, defined by the grading and the functor from the groupoid in question to the Picard inverse category, to the collection of equivalence classes of rings epsilon-strongly graded by the groupoid.

In Ersoy et al. [J. Algebra481 (2017), 1–11], we have proved that if G is a locally finite group with an elementary abelian p-subgroup A of order strictly greater than p2 such that CG(A) is Chernikov and for every non-identity α ∈ A the centralizer CG(α) does not involve an infinite simple group, then G is almost locally soluble. This result is a consequence of another result proved in Ersoy et al. [J. Algebra481 (2017), 1–11], namely: if G is a simple locally finite group with an elementary abelian group A of automorphisms acting on it such that the order of A is greater than p2, the centralizer CG(A) is Chernikov and for every non-identity α ∈ A the set of fixed points CG(α) does not involve an infinite simple groups then G is finite. In this paper, we improve this result about simple locally finite groups: Indeed, suppose that G is a simple locally finite group, consider a finite non-abelian subgroup P of automorphisms of exponent p such that the centralizer CG(P) is Chernikov and for every non-identity α ∈ P the set of fixed points CG(α) does not involve an infinite simple group. We prove that if Aut(G) has such a subgroup, then G ≅PSLp(k) where char k ≠ p and P has a subgroup Q of order p2 such that CG(P) = Q.