What is "free product"

n. (context mathematics English) A group formed from others by concatenate their presentations (when those presentations are written with disjoint sets of generators).

In mathematics, specifically group theory, the free product is an operation that takes two groups G and H and constructs a new group G ∗ H. The result contains both G and H as subgroups, is generated by the elements of these subgroups, and is the “most general” group having these properties. Unless one of the groups G and H is trivial, the free product is always infinite. The construction of a free product is similar in spirit to the construction of a free group (the most general group that can be made from a given set of generators).

The free product is the coproduct in the category of groups. That is, the free product plays the same role in group theory that disjoint union plays in set theory, or that the direct sum plays in module theory. Even if the groups are commutative, their free product is not, unless one of the two groups is the trivial group. Therefore, the free product is not the coproduct in the category of abelian groups.

The free product is important in algebraic topology because of van Kampen's theorem, which states that the fundamental group of the union of two path-connected topological spaces whose intersection is also path-connected is always an amalgamated free product of the fundamental groups of the spaces. In particular, the fundamental group of the wedge sum of two spaces (i.e. the space obtained by joining two spaces together at a single point) is simply the free product of the fundamental groups of the spaces.

Free products are also important in Bass–Serre theory, the study of groups acting by automorphisms on trees. Specifically, any group acting with finite vertex stabilizers on a tree may be constructed from finite groups using amalgamated free products and HNN extensions. Using the action of the modular group on a certain tessellation of the hyperbolic plane, it follows from this theory that the modular group is isomorphic to the free product of cyclic groups of orders 4 and 6 amalgamated over a cyclic group of order 2.

The free product (= coproduct) of groups is nicely set in the context of Categories and Groupoids in Philip Higgins 1971 book referenced below. The point is that a disjoint union of groups is not a group but it is a groupoid. A groupoid G has a universal group U(G) and the universal group of a disjoint union of groups is the free (= coproduct) of the groups.