We prove the existence of a bound to the number of components of an ∀-definable set in the reals, using Pfaffian functions, and give some applications.

It was a fundamental insight of Shelah that the equivalence classes of a definable equivalence relation on a structure M often behave like (and indeed must be treated like) the elements of the structure itself, and that these so-called imaginary elements are both necessary and sufficient for developing many aspects of stability theory. The expanded structure Meq was introduced to make this insight explicit and manageable. In Meq we have “names” for all things (subsets, relations, functions, etc.) “definable” inside M. Recent results of Bruno Poizat allow a particularly simple and more or less algebraic modification of Meq in the case that M is a module. It is the purpose of this paper to describe this nearly algebraic structure in such a way as to make the usual algebraic tools of the model theory of modules readily available in this more general context. It should be pointed out that some of our discussion has been part of the “folklore” of the subject for some time; it is certainly time to make this “folklore” precise, correct, and readily available.

Modules have proved to be good examples of stable structures. Not, we mean, in the sense that they are well-behaved (which, in the main, they are), but in the sense that they are straightforward enough to provide comprehensible illustrations of concepts while, at the same time, they have turned out to be far less atypical than one might have supposed. Indeed, a major feature of recent stability theory has been the ubiquitous appearance of modules or more general “abelian structures” in abstract stable structures.

In [H1] Hrushovski introduced a number of ideas concerning the relations between types which have proved to be of importance in stability theory. These relations allow the geometries associated to various types to be connected. In this paper we consider the meaning of these concepts in modules (and more generally in abelian structures). In particular, we provide algebraic characterisations of notions such as hereditary orthogonality, “p -internal” and “p-simple”. These characterisations are in the same spirit as the algebraic characterisations of such concepts as orthogonality and regularity, that have already proved so useful. Of the concepts that we consider, p-simplicity is dealt with in [H3] and the other three concepts in [H2].

The descriptions arose out of our desire to develop some intuition for these ideas. We think that our characterisations may well be useful in the same way to others, particularly since our examples are algebraically uncomplicated and so understanding them does not require expertise in the model theory of modules. Furthermore, in view of the increasing importance of these notions, the results themselves are likely to be directly useful in the model-theoretic study of modules and, via abelian structures, in more general stability-theoretic contexts. Finally, some of our characterisations suggest that these ideas may be relevant to the algebraic problem of understanding the structure of indecomposable injective modules.

In the thirty years since its invention by Abraham Robinson, nonstandard analysis has become a useful tool for research in many areas of mathematics. It seems fair to say, however, that the search for practically satisfactory foundations for the subject is not yet completed. New proposals, intended to remedy various shortcomings of older approaches, continue to be put forward. The objective of this paper is to show that nonstandard concepts have a natural place in the usual (more or less “standard”) set theory, and to argue that this approach improves upon various aspects of hitherto considered systems, while retaining most of their attractive features. We do this by working in Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory with non-well-founded sets. It has always been clear that the axiom of regularity may fail for external sets. The previous approaches either avoid non-well-foundedness by considering only that fragment of nonstandard set theory that is well-founded (over individuals; enlargements of Robinson and Zakon [17]) or reluctantly live with it (various axiomatic nonstandard set theories). Ballard and Davidon [2] were the first to propose constructive use for non-well-foundedness in the foundations of nonstandard analysis. In the present paper we adopt a very strong anti-foundation axiom. In the resulting more or less “usual” set theory, the (to the “standard” mathematician) unfamiliar concepts of standard, external and internal sets can be defined and their requisite properties proved (rather than postulated, as is the case in axiomatic nonstandard set theories).