Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 December 2014
Given a class ${\cal C}$ of subgroups of a topological group G, we say
that a subgroup
$H \in {\cal C}$ is a universal
${\cal C}$subgroup of G if every subgroup
$K \in {\cal C}$ is a continuous homomorphic preimage of H.
Such subgroups may be regarded as complete members of
${\cal C}$ with respect to a natural preorder on the set of subgroups of
G. We show that for any locally compact Polish group
G, the countable power Gω has a universal Kσ subgroup and a universal compactly generated subgroup. We prove a weaker
version of this in the nonlocally compact case and provide an example showing
that this result cannot readily be improved. Additionally, we show that many
standard Banach spaces (viewed as additive topological groups) have universal
Kσ and compactly generated subgroups. As an aside, we explore the
relationship between the classes of Kσ and compactly generated subgroups and give conditions under which the two
coincide.