We present the true stages machinery and illustrate its applications to descriptive set theory. We use this machinery to provide new proofs of the Hausdorff–Kuratowski and Wadge theorems on the structure of $\mathbf {\Delta }^0_\xi $, Louveau and Saint Raymond’s separation theorem, and Louveau’s separation theorem.

We can measure the complexity of a logical formula by counting the number of alternations between existential and universal quantifiers. Suppose that an elementary first-order formula $\varphi $ (in $\mathcal {L}_{\omega ,\omega }$) is equivalent to a formula of the infinitary language $\mathcal {L}_{\infty ,\omega }$ with n alternations of quantifiers. We prove that $\varphi $ is equivalent to a finitary formula with n alternations of quantifiers. Thus using infinitary logic does not allow us to express a finitary formula in a simpler way.

When classes of structures are not first-order definable, we might still try to find a nice description. There are two common ways for doing this. One is to expand the language, leading to notions of pseudo-elementary classes, and the other is to allow infinite conjuncts and disjuncts. In this paper we examine the intersection. Namely, we address the question: Which classes of structures are both pseudo-elementary and ${\mathcal {L}}_{\omega _1, \omega }$ -elementary? We find that these are exactly the classes that can be defined by an infinitary formula that has no infinitary disjunctions.

An oracle A is low-for-speed if it is unable to speed up the computation of a set which is already computable: if a decidable language can be decided in time $t(n)$ using A as an oracle, then it can be decided without an oracle in time $p(t(n))$ for some polynomial p. The existence of a set which is low-for-speed was first shown by Bayer and Slaman who constructed a non-computable computably enumerable set which is low-for-speed. In this paper we answer a question previously raised by Bienvenu and Downey, who asked whether there is a minimal degree which is low-for-speed. The standard method of constructing a set of minimal degree via forcing is incompatible with making the set low-for-speed; but we are able to use an interesting new combination of forcing and full approximation to construct a set which is both of minimal degree and low-for-speed.

Every countable structure has a sentence of the infinitary logic $\mathcal {L}_{\omega _1 \omega }$ which characterizes that structure up to isomorphism among countable structures. Such a sentence is called a Scott sentence, and can be thought of as a description of the structure. The least complexity of a Scott sentence for a structure can be thought of as a measurement of the complexity of describing the structure. We begin with an introduction to the area, with short and simple proofs where possible, followed by a survey of recent advances.

The $\Omega $ numbers—the halting probabilities of universal prefix-free machines—are known to be exactly the Martin-Löf random left-c.e. reals. We show that one cannot uniformly produce, from a Martin-Löf random left-c.e. real $\alpha $ , a universal prefix-free machine U whose halting probability is $\alpha $ . We also answer a question of Barmpalias and Lewis-Pye by showing that given a left-c.e. real $\alpha $ , one cannot uniformly produce a left-c.e. real $\beta $ such that $\alpha - \beta $ is neither left-c.e. nor right-c.e.

We define the Scott complexity of a countable structure to be the least complexity of a Scott sentence for that structure. This is a finer notion of complexity than Scott rank: it distinguishes between whether the simplest Scott sentence is $\Sigma _{\alpha }$ , $\Pi _{\alpha }$ , or $\mathrm {d-}\Sigma _{\alpha }$ . We give a complete classification of the possible Scott complexities, including an example of a structure whose simplest Scott sentence is $\Sigma _{\lambda + 1}$ for $\lambda $ a limit ordinal. This answers a question left open by A. Miller.

We also construct examples of computable structures of high Scott rank with Scott complexities $\Sigma _{\omega _1^{CK}+1}$ and $\mathrm {d-}\Sigma _{\omega _1^{CK}+1}$ . There are three other possible Scott complexities for a computable structure of high Scott rank: $\Pi _{\omega _1^{CK}}$ , $\Pi _{\omega _1^{CK}+1}$ , $\Sigma _{\omega _1^{CK}+1}$ . Examples of these were already known. Our examples are computable structures of Scott rank $\omega _1^{CK}+1$ which, after naming finitely many constants, have Scott rank $\omega _1^{CK}$ . The existence of such structures was an open question.

We study computable Polish spaces and Polish groups up to homeomorphism. We prove a natural effective analogy of Stone duality, and we also develop an effective definability technique which works up to homeomorphism. As an application, we show that there is a $\Delta ^0_2$ Polish space not homeomorphic to a computable one. We apply our techniques to build, for any computable ordinal $\alpha $, an effectively closed set not homeomorphic to any $0^{(\alpha )}$-computable Polish space; this answers a question of Nies. We also prove analogous results for compact Polish groups and locally path-connected spaces.

A problem is a multivalued function from a set of instances to a set of solutions. We consider only instances and solutions coded by sets of integers. A problem admits preservation of some computability-theoretic weakness property if every computable instance of the problem admits a solution relative to which the property holds. For example, cone avoidance is the ability, given a noncomputable set A and a computable instance of a problem ${\mathsf {P}}$ , to find a solution relative to which A is still noncomputable.

In this article, we compare relativized versions of computability-theoretic notions of preservation which have been studied in reverse mathematics, and prove that the ones which were not already separated by natural statements in the literature actually coincide. In particular, we prove that it is equivalent to admit avoidance of one cone, of $\omega $ cones, of one hyperimmunity or of one non- $\Sigma ^{0}_1$ definition. We also prove that the hierarchies of preservation of hyperimmunity and non- $\Sigma ^{0}_1$ definitions coincide. On the other hand, none of these notions coincide in a nonrelativized setting.

Our main result is that there exist structures which cannot be computably recovered from their tree of tuples. This implies that there are structures with no computable copies which nevertheless cannot code any information in a natural/functorial way.

This paper investigates the principles that one must add to Boolean algebra to capture reasoning not only about intersection, union, and complementation of sets, but also about the relative size of sets. We completely axiomatize such reasoning under the Cantorian definition of relative size in terms of injections.

This article builds on Humberstone’s idea of defining models of propositional modal logic where total possible worlds are replaced by partial possibilities. We follow a suggestion of Humberstone by introducing possibility models for quantified modal logic. We show that a simple quantified modal logic is sound and complete for our semantics. Although Holliday showed that for many propositional modal logics, it is possible to give a completeness proof using a canonical model construction where every possibility consists of finitely many formulas, we show that this is impossible to do in the first-order case. However, one can still construct a canonical model where every possibility consists of a computable set of formulas and thus still of finitely much information.

A structure is automatic if its domain, functions, and relations are all regular languages. Using the fact that every automatic structure is decidable, in the literature many decision problems have been solved by giving an automatic presentation of a particular structure. Khoussainov and Nerode asked whether there is some way to tell whether a structure has, or does not have, an automatic presentation. We answer this question by showing that the set of Turing machines that represent automata-presentable structures is ${\rm{\Sigma }}_1^1 $-complete. We also use similar methods to show that there is no reasonable characterisation of the structures with a polynomial-time presentation in the sense of Nerode and Remmel.

We introduce the notion of infinitary interpretation of structures. In general, an interpretation between structures induces a continuous homomorphism between their automorphism groups, and furthermore, it induces a functor between the categories of copies of each structure. We show that for the case of infinitary interpretation the reversals are also true: every Baire-measurable homomorphism between the automorphism groups of two countable structures is induced by an infinitary interpretation, and every Baire-measurable functor between the set of copies of two countable structures is induced by an infinitary interpretation. Furthermore, we show that the complexities are maintained in the sense that if the functor is ${\bf{\Delta }}_\alpha ^0$, then the interpretation that induces it is ${\rm{\Delta }}_\alpha ^{in}$ up to ${\bf{\Delta }}_\alpha ^0$ equivalence.

Downey and Kurtz asked whether every orderable computable group is classically isomorphic to a group with a computable ordering. By an order on a group, one might mean either a left-order or a bi-order. We answer their question for left-orderable groups by showing that there is a computable left-orderable group which is not classically isomorphic to a computable group with a computable left-order. The case of bi-orderable groups is left open.

We investigate when a computable automorphism of a computable field can be effectively extended to a computable automorphism of its (computable) algebraic closure. We then apply our results and techniques to study effective embeddings of computable difference fields into computable difference closed fields.

We investigate the complexity of isomorphisms of computable structures on cones in the Turing degrees. We show that, on a cone, every structure has a strong degree of categoricity, and that degree of categoricity is ${\rm{\Delta }}_\alpha ^0 $-complete for some α. To prove this, we extend Montalbán’s η-system framework to deal with limit ordinals in a more general way. We also show that, for any fixed computable structure, there is an ordinal α and a cone in the Turing degrees such that the exact complexity of computing an isomorphism between the given structure and another copy ${\cal B}$ in the cone is a c.e. degree in ${\rm{\Delta }}_\alpha ^0\left( {\cal B} \right)$. In each of our theorems the cone in question is clearly described in the beginning of the proof, so it is easy to see how the theorems can be viewed as general theorems with certain effectiveness conditions.

Our main result is the equivalence of two notions of reducibility between structures. One is a syntactical notion which is an effective version of interpretability as in model theory, and the other one is a computational notion which is a strengthening of the well-known Medvedev reducibility. We extend our result to effective bi-interpretability and also to effective reductions between classes of structures.

Suppose p is the generic type of a differential-algebraic jet space to a finite dimensional differential-algebraic variety at a generic point. It is shown that p satisfies a certain strengthening of almost internality to the constants. This strengthening, which was originally called “being Moishezon to the constants” in [9] but is here renamed preserving internality to the constants, is a model-theoretic abstraction of the generic behaviour of jet spaces in complex-analytic geometry. An example is given showing that only a generic analogue holds in the differential-algebraic case: there is a finite dimensional differential-algebraic variety X with a subvariety Z that is internal to the constants, such that the restriction of the differential-algebraic tangent bundle of X to Z is not almost internal to the constants.