On The Profinite Topology on a Free Group

If F is a free abstract group, its profinite topology is thecoarsest topology making F into a topological group, such thatevery group homomorphism from F into a finite group is continuous.It was shown by M. Hall Jr that every finitely generated subgroupof F is closed in that topology. Let H₁, H₂, ..., H_n be finitelygenerated subgroups of F. J.-E. Pin and C. Reutenauer have conjecturedthat the product H₁ H₂ ... H_n is a closed set in the profinitetopology of F; also, they have shown that this conjecture impliesa conjecture of J. Rhodes on finite semigroups. In this paperwe give a positive answer to the conjecture of Pin and Reutenauer.Our method is based on the theory of profinite groups actingon graphs.