Abstract In this paper we study the relativized Lascar Galois group of a strong type. The group is a quasi-compact connected topological group, and if in addition the underlying theory T is G-compact, then the group is compact. We apply compact group theory to obtain model theoretic results in this note. For example, we use the divisibility of the Lascar group of a strong type to show that, in a simple theory, such types have a certain model theoretic property that we call divisible amalgamation. The main result of this paper is that if c is a finite tuple algebraic over a tuple a, the Lascar group of $\operatorname {stp}(ac)$ is abelian, and the underlying theory is G-compact, then the Lascar groups of $\operatorname {stp}(ac)$ and of $\operatorname {stp}(a)$ are isomorphic. To show this, we prove a purely compact group-theoretic result that any compact connected abelian group is isomorphic to its quotient by every finite subgroup. Several (counter)examples arising in connection with the theoretical development of this note are presented as well. For example, we show that, in the main result above, neither the assumption that the Lascar group of $\operatorname {stp}(ac)$ is abelian, nor the assumption of c being finite can be removed.

Abstract We study amalgamation properties in a family of abstract elementary classes that we call coloring classes. The family includes the examples previously studied in [3]. We establish that the amalgamation property is equivalent to the disjoint amalgamation property in all coloring classes; find the Hanf number for the amalgamation property for coloring classes; and improve the results of [3] by showing, in ZFC, that the (disjoint) amalgamation property for classes Kα studied in that paper must hold up to ℶα (only a consistency result was previously known).

Abstract We study when classes can have the disjoint amalgamation property for a proper initial segment of cardinals. For every natural number k, there is a class Kk, defined by a sentence in Lω1,ω that has no models of cardinality greater than ℶk + 1, but Kk has the disjoint amalgamation property on models of cardinality less than or equal to ℵk − 3 and has models of cardinality ℵk − 1. More strongly, we can have disjoint amalgamation up to ℵ∝ for ∝ < ω1, but have a bound on size of models. For every countable ordinal ∝, there is a class K∝ defined by a sentence in Lω1,ω that has no models of cardinality greater than ℶω1, but K does have the disjoint amalgamation property on models of cardinality less than or equal to ℵ∝. Finally we show that we can extend the ℵ∝ to ℶ∝ in the second theorem consistently with ZFC and while having ℵi ≪ ℶi for 0 < i < ∝. Similar results hold for arbitrary ordinals ∝ with ∣∝∣ = k and Lk + ω.