The Banach–Mazur separable quotient problem asks whether every infinite-dimensional Banach space $B$ has a quotient space that is an infinite-dimensional separable Banach space. The question has remained open for over 80 years, although an affirmative answer is known in special cases such as when $B$ is reflexive or even a dual of a Banach space. Very recently, it has been shown to be true for dual-like spaces. An analogous problem for topological groups is: Does every infinite-dimensional (in the topological sense) connected (Hausdorff) topological group $G$ have a quotient topological group that is infinite dimensional and metrisable? While this is known to be true if $G$ is the underlying topological group of an infinite-dimensional Banach space, it is shown here to be false even if $G$ is the underlying topological group of an infinite-dimensional locally convex space. Indeed, it is shown that the free topological vector space on any countably infinite $k_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}}$-space is an infinite-dimensional toplogical vector space which does not have any quotient topological group that is infinite dimensional and metrisable. By contrast, the Graev free abelian topological group and the Graev free topological group on any infinite connected Tychonoff space, both of which are connected topological groups, are shown here to have the tubby torus $\mathbb{T}^{\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}}$, which is an infinite-dimensional metrisable group, as a quotient group.

A class of abelian topological groups was previously defined to be a variety of topological groups with coproducts if it is closed under forming subgroups, quotients, products and coproducts in the category of all abelian topological groups and continuous homomorphisms. This extended research on varieties of topological groups initiated by the second author. The key to describing varieties of topological groups generated by various classes was proving that all topological groups in the variety are a quotient of a subgroup of a product of groups in the generating class. This paper analyses generating varieties of topological groups with coproducts. It focuses on the interplay between forming products and coproducts. It is proved that the variety of topological groups with coproducts generated by all discrete groups contains topological groups which cannot be expressed as a quotient of a subgroup of a product of a coproduct of discrete groups. It is proved that the variety of topological groups with coproducts generated by any infinite-dimensional Hilbert space contains all infinite-dimensional Hilbert spaces, answering an open question. This contrasts with the result that a variety of topological groups generated by a topological group does not contain any infinite-dimensional Hilbert space of greater cardinality.

It is proved that any surjective morphism $f:\mathbb{Z}^{{\it\kappa}}\rightarrow K$ onto a locally compact group $K$ is open for every cardinal ${\it\kappa}$. This answers a question posed by Hofmann and the second author.

We prove that groups definable in o-minimal structures have Cartan subgroups, and only finitely many conjugacy classes of such subgroups. We also delineate with precision how these subgroups cover the ambient group.

A pro-Lie group is a projective limit of finite dimensional Lie groups. It is proved that a surjective continuous group homomorphism between connected pro-Lie groups is open. In fact this remains true for almost connected pro-Lie groups where a topological group is called almost connected if the factor group modulo the identity component is compact. As consequences we get a Closed Graph Theorem and the validity of the Second Isomorphism Theorem for pro-Lie groups in the almost connected context.

A topological group $G$ is called extremely amenable if every continuous action of $G$ on a compact space has a fixed point. This concept is linked with geometry of high dimensions (concentration of measure). We show that a von Neumann algebra is approximately finite dimensional if and only if its unitary group with the strong topology is the product of an extremely amenable group with a compact group, which strengthens a result by de la Harpe. As a consequence, a $C^\ast$-algebra $A$ is nuclear if and only if the unitary group $U(A)$ with the relative weak topology is strongly amenable in the sense of Glasner. We prove that the group of automorphisms of a Lebesgue space with a non-atomic measure is extremely amenable with the weak topology and establish a similar result for groups of non-singular transformations. As a consequence, we prove extreme amenability of the groups of isometries of $L^p(0,1)$, $1\leq p<\infty$, extending a classical result of Gromov and Milman ($p=2$). We show that a measure class preserving equivalence relation $\mathcal{R}$ on a standard Borel space is amenable if and only if the full group $[\mathcal{R}]$, equipped with the uniform topology, is extremely amenable. Finally, we give natural examples of concentration to a non-trivial space in the sense of Gromov occurring in the automorphism groups of injective factors of type III.

We prove that in the character group of an abelian topological group, the topology associated (in a standard way) to the continuous convergence structure is the finest of all those which induce the topology of simple convergence on the corresponding equicontinuous subsets. If the starting group is furthermore metrizable (or even almost metrizable), we obtain that such a topology coincides with the compact-open topology. This result constitutes a generalization of the theorem of Banach-Dieudonné, which is well known in the theory of locally convex spaces.

We also characterize completeness, in the class of locally quasi-convex metrizable groups, by means of a property which we have called the quasi-convex compactness property, or briefly qcp (Section 3).