Example of a nontrivial abelian group $G$ such that $G/pG = 0$ for all primes $p$

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I'm struggling to find an example of a non-trivial abelian group $G$ such that $G/pG = 0$ for all primes $p$. Any ideas?

Note: I proved earlier that a finitely generated abelian group is finite iff $G/pG = 0$ for some prime $p$. Thus $G$ must be finite. So by the fundamental theorem of finite abelian groups, $G$ must have the form

$G \cong C_{d_1} \times … \times C_{d_n}$ for some integers $d_1 |…|d_n$

where $C_d$ is the cyclic group of order $d$ ($= \mathbb{Z}/d\mathbb{Z}$)

I tried e.g. $G = C_2 = \{0,1\}$. With this I get $G/pG = \{0 + p\{0,1\}, 1+p\{0,1\}\}$. So if $p$ is any odd prime, $G/pG =\{0 + \{0,1\}, 1+\{0,1\}\}$
$= \{\{0,1\}\}= 0$ (the first equality holds because $p\equiv 0$(mod $2$))

But if $p$ is not an odd prime, i.e. $p = 2$, something weird happens because $2\cdot \{0,1\} = \{0,0\}$

Best Answer

The condition $G/pG = 0$ for all primes $p$ is the same as $G$ being divisible. Indeed, the condition you wrote is the same as saying that $pG = G$ for all $G$. Then for a prime $q$, we also have $qp G = q(pG) = qG = G$. Then by the fundamental theorem of arithmetic, $nG = G$ for all $n \neq 0$. In other words, the map $G \longrightarrow G$ via $g \mapsto ng$ is onto for all $n \neq 0$. This is exactly what it means to be divisible.

There are many divisible abelian groups, but no finitely generated ones by your argument. Here's one example: $\mathbb Q$. Other examples can be constructed from this one by realizing that quotients and products of divisible groups are divisible. So for instance, $\mathbb R \times \mathbb R / \mathbb Z \times \mathbb Q / \mathbb Z$ is divisible. Any $\mathbb Q$ vector space is as well. An extremely important homological fact is that every abelian group embeds into a divisible group (we say that $\mathbb Z$-Mod has "enough injectives")

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