Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 March 2014
We consider actions of completely metrisable groups on simplicial trees in the context of the Bass–Serre theory. Our main result characterises continuity of the amplitude function corresponding to a given action. Under fairly mild conditions on a completely metrisable group G, namely, that the set of elements generating a non-discrete or finite subgroup is somewhere dense, we show that in any decomposition as a free product with amalgamation, G = A *cB, the amalgamated groups A, B and C are open in G.