Will Johnson

We consider interpretable topological spaces and topological groups in a p-adically closed field K. We identify a special class of “admissible topologies” with topological tameness properties like generic continuity, similar to the topology on definable subsets of Kn. We show that every interpretable set has at least one admissible topology, and that every interpretable group has a unique admissible group topology. We then consider definable compactness (in the sense of Fornasiero) on interpretable groups. We show that an interpretable group is definably compact if and only if it has finitely satisfiable generics (fsg), generalizing an earlier result on definable groups. As a consequence, we see that fsg is a definable property in definable families of interpretable groups, and that any fsg interpretable group defined over Qp is definably isomorphic to a definable group.

Recall that a group G has finitely satisfiable generics (fsg) or definable f-generics (dfg) if there is a global type p on G and a small model $M_0$ such that every left translate of p is finitely satisfiable in $M_0$ or definable over $M_0$, respectively. We show that any abelian group definable in a p-adically closed field is an extension of a definably compact fsg definable group by a dfg definable group. We discuss an approach which might prove a similar statement for interpretable abelian groups. In the case where G is an abelian group definable in the standard model $\mathbb {Q}_p$, we show that $G^0 = G^{00}$, and that G is an open subgroup of an algebraic group, up to finite factors. This latter result can be seen as a rough classification of abelian definable groups in $\mathbb {Q}_p$.

In [16], Peterzil and Steinhorn proved that if a group G definable in an o-minimal structure is not definably compact, then G contains a definable torsion-free subgroup of dimension 1. We prove here a p-adic analogue of the Peterzil–Steinhorn theorem, in the special case of abelian groups. Let G be an abelian group definable in a p-adically closed field M. If G is not definably compact then there is a definable subgroup H of dimension 1 which is not definably compact. In a future paper we will generalize this to non-abelian G.