Characterizations of Cancellable Groups

Abstract

An abelian group $A$ is said to be cancellable if whenever $A \oplus G$ is isomorphic to $A \oplus H$, $G$ is isomorphic to $H$. We show that the index set of cancellable rank 1 torsion-free abelian groups is $\Pi^0_4$ $m$-complete, showing that the classification by Fuchs and Loonstra cannot be simplified. For arbitrary non-finitely generated groups, we show that the cancellation property is $\Pi^1_1$ $m$-hard; we know of no upper bound, but we conjecture that it is $\Pi^1_2$ $m$-complete.