Hirsch-Plotkin radical of stability groups

Abstract

We study the Hirsch-Plotkin radical of stability groups of (general) subspace series of infinite dimensional vector spaces. We show that in countable dimension and some other cases, the HP-radical of the stability group coincides with the set of all space automorphisms that fix a finite sub-series; this implies that the HP radical is a Fitting group. Conversely, we prove that every countable Fitting group, which is either torsion-free or a p-group may be represented as a subgroup of the HP radical of a series stabilizer.