Essential subgroups of topological groups

We study the class Wof Hausdorff topological groups Gfor which the following two cardinal invariants coincide

ES(G)=min{|H|:H≤ Gdense and essential}

TD(G)=min{|H|:H≤ Gtotally dense}

We prove that W contains the following classes:locally compact abelian groups, compact connected groups, countably compact totally discon¬nected abelian groups, topologically simple groups, locally compact Abelian groups when endowed with their Bohr topology, totally minimal abelian groups and free Abelian topological groups. For all these classes we are also able to giv ean explicit computation of the common value of ESand TD.