The character of free topological groups I

A systematic analysis is made of the character of the free and free abelian topological groups on uniform spaces and on topological spaces. In the case of the free abelian topological group on a uniform space, expressions are given for the character in terms of simple cardinal invariants of the family of uniformly continuous pseudometrics of the given uniform space and of the uniformity itself. From these results, others follow on the basis of various topological assumptions. Amongst these: (i) if X is a compact Hausdorff space, then the character of the free abelian topological group on X lies between w(X) and w(X)ℵ0, where w(X) denotes the weight of X; (ii) if the Tychonoff space X is not a P-space, then the character of the free abelian topological group is bounded below by the “small cardinal” d; and (iii) if X is an infinite compact metrizable space, then the character is precisely d. In the non-abelian case, we show that the character of the free abelian topological group is always less than or equal to that of the corresponding free topological group, but the inequality is in general strict. It is also shown that the characters of the free abelian and the free topological groups are equal whenever the given uniform space is w-narrow. A sequel to this paper analyses more closely the cases of the free and free abelian topological groups on compact Hausdorff spaces and metrizable spaces