Consider the group $\bigoplus_{i=-\infty}^{\infty}\mathbb{Z}_{(i)}$, where each $\mathbb{Z}_{(i)}$ is a copy of $\mathbb{Z}$. Given $x \in \bigoplus_{i=-\infty}^{\infty}\mathbb{Z}_{(i)}$, let $x^{(k)}$ be the element in $\bigoplus_{i=-\infty}^{\infty}\mathbb{Z}_{(i)}$ obtained by shifting every entry of $x$ to the right by $k$ places. Let $x_1, x_2, \ldots, x_n \in \bigoplus_{i=-\infty}^{\infty}\mathbb{Z}_{(i)}$ be some non-zero elements.
I was wondering if there is a bound for the number of $x_j$ we can have such that
- the subgroup $ H = \langle x_j^{(i)} \mid i \in \mathbb{Z}, 1 \leq j \leq n \rangle $ is a proper subgroup
- $H \neq \langle x_j^{(i)} \mid i \in \mathbb{Z}, 1 \leq j \leq n, j \neq k \rangle $ for $1 \leq k \leq n \rangle$, i.e. if we remove one of $x_j$'s, we get a strickly smaller subgroup.
I was looking at this example: let $x_1 = (\ldots, 0, 1, 1, 0, \ldots)$ and $x_2 = (\ldots, 0, 2, 0 , \ldots)$. I don't seem to be able to find another element $x_3$ that satisfies the above condition.
(This is a follow-up question to the one I asked here.)