Functional Reducts of Boolean Algebras
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FUNCTIONAL REDUCTS OF THE COUNTABLE ATOMLESS BOOLEAN ALGEBRA BERTALAN BODOR, KENDE KALINA, AND CSABA SZABO´ Abstract. For an algebra A = (A, f1,...,fn) the algebra B = (A, t1,...,tk) is called a functional reduct if each tj is a term function of A. We classify the functional reducts of the countable atomless Boolean algebra up to first-order interdefinability. That is, we consider two functional reducts the “same”, if their group of automorphisms is the same. We show that there are 13 such reducts and describe their structures and group of automor- phisms. 1. Introduction Let Ba = (B, ∧, ∨, 0, 1, ¬) denote the countable atomless Boolean algebra. It is known that this structure is unique up to isomorphism. It is easy to check that the structure Ba is homogeneous, that is every isomorphism between finite substructures of Ba can be extended to an automorphism of Ba. The struc- ture Ba is also ω-categorical which means that every countable structure with the same first-order theory is isomorphic to Ba. The Boolean algebra Ba can be obtained as the Fra¨ıss´elimit of the class of finite Boolean algebras. Homo- geneous structures have been extensively studied and they are often interesting on their own. Some of the classical examples for homogeneous structures are the random graph, the countably infinite dimensional vector spaces over finite fields, and the rationals as an ordered set. The general theory of homogeneous structures was initiated by Fra¨ıss´e[9]. We refer the reader to [13] for a detailed discussion about homogeneous structures. arXiv:1506.01314v2 [math.LO] 5 Feb 2020 Definition 1. Let A = (A, f1,...,fn) be an algebra on the set A with oper- ations f1,...,fn. A functional reduct of A is a structure B = (A, t1,...,tk) on the same set A and with operations t1,...,tk such that every tj is a term function of A (see Definition 2). For example the structure A = (Ba, ∆) where ∆ denotes the symmetric difference, ∆(x, y)= ¬(x∧y) ∧(x∨y) is a functional reduct of Ba which is an Abelian group. In this paper we will classify the functional reducts of Ba. We 1 2 B.BODOR,K.KALINA,ANDCS.SZABO´ will show that there are exactly 13 of them up to first-order interdefinability. The example given above is denoted by (+0, 0) later in the paper. If A is a first-order structure then we will call a structure B a reduct of A if B has the same domain set as A, and all constants, relations, and functions of B are first-order definable over A. For a given first-order structure we can define a preorder on its reducts: B1 . B2 if and only if B2 is a reduct of B1. Two reducts are called first-order interdefinable if and only if B1 . B2 and B2 . B1. It is an important consequence of Theorem 3 that a reduct of an ω-categorical structure is also ω-categorical itself. The automorphism group of a reduct consists of the permutations preserving all relations of the reduct, so the automorphism group of a reduct contains the automorphism group of the original structure. In general, if B1 . B2 then Aut(B1) ≤ Aut(B2). Moreover, the group Aut(B) is closed in the topology of pointwise convergence, i.e. the subspace topology of the product topology on AA where A is equipped with the discrete topology. If the structure A is ω-categorical then there is a bijection between the closed subgroups of Sym(A) containing Aut(A) and the equivalence classes of reducts of A by first-order interdefinability. So in the case of ω-categorical structures the classification of the reducts is equivalent with the description of the closed groups containing the automorphism group. language. The classification of the reducts up to first-order interdefinability is known for a handful of ω-categorical homogeneous structures. For example the set of rationals equipped with the usual ordering has five reducts up to first- order interdefinability [8], and similarly the the random graph [16], the random tournament [2] and the random partially ordered set [14] also have five. The classification is also known for the Henson graphs [15]. The homogeneous ordered graph has more than 40 [3], and Q≤ (rationals with the usual ordering) equipped with an additional constant has 116 reducts [12]. Note that in all these classifications the languages of the structures in question do not contain any function symbols. In order to handle the reducts of these structures Bodirsky and Pinsker de- veloped some techniques using Ramsey theory and canonical functions (see [4] for instance). However, these techniques only work for homogeneous struc- tures over finite relational languages. It follows from an easy orbit counting argument that the structure Ba is not homogeneous over any finite relational −1 language: Aut(Ba) has at least 22n n-orbits, whereas the automorphism group of a homogeneous structure over a finite relational language has at most 2p(n) n-orbits for some polynomial p. Therefore the methods mentioned above cannot be applied in our case. FUNCTIONAL REDUCTS OF THE COUNTABLE ATOMLESS BOOLEAN ALGEBRA 3 In this paper we show that Ba has exactly 13 functional reducts. 11 out of these 13 reducts are reducts of Ba considered as a vector space together with the constant 1 (later denoted by (+0, 0, 1)). Apart from these there is one nontrivial reduct. This reduct can be represented as Ba with the median relation M(x, y, z)=(x ∨ y) ∧ (y ∨ z) ∧ (z ∨ x). The automorphism group of this reduct is generated by the translations tc : x 7→ x + c over Aut(Ba). We also give a list of all reducts known to us at the end of this article, the lattice of these reducts can be seen on Figure 2. This list contains 12 infinite ascending chains, and 23 sporadic reducts. Note that our list might be incomplete, but we hope that this classification of functional reducts can be used for the classification of all reducts in the future. 2. Background We can define a preorder similarly on the functional reducts of a given algebra: C1 . C2 if and only if all functions in C2 can be defined over C1 using first-order formulas. The automorphism groups of such functional reducts will also be closed. It remains true that two functional reduct is first-order interdefinable if and only if their automorphism groups are the same. But the first-order equivalence classes of functional reducts are not in a bijection with the closed groups: there may exist closed groups containing the automorphism group of the original structure which cannot be obtained as the automorphism group of a functional reduct. Definition 2. Let A = (A, f1,...,fn) be an algebra. Then we say that a function g : Ak → A is first-order definable over A if the relation R := {(x, g(x)) : x ∈ Ak} is definable by a first-order formula using the functions f1,...,fn. We say that a function g is a term function of the algebra A if g can be generated as a function from the functions f1,...,fn, and the projection maps k πi :(x1,...,xk) 7→ xi. Note that not every first-order definable function is a term function: if we consider any lattice as a ∧-semilattice, then the operation ∨ is first-order definable (see Lemma 11), but it is not a term function in the ∧-semilattice. Let B =(B, ∧, ∨, 0, 1, ¬) be an arbitrary Boolean algebra. Then we define the operations + and · on B as x + y := ∆(x, y) = ¬(x ∧ y) ∧ (x ∨ y), and x · y = xy = x ∧ y. It is well-known that in this case the structure B with the operations + and ·, and the constants 0 and 1 form a ring in a natural way. It is also known that this ring satisfies the identities x2 = x and 2x = 0. Using this definition the algebras B =(B, ∧, ∨, 0, 1, ¬) and B′ =(B, +, ·, 0, 1) are term equivalent meaning that a function is a term function over B if and 4 B.BODOR,K.KALINA,ANDCS.SZABO´ only if it is a term function over B′. In order to see this it is enough to show that every function of B′ is term function of B, and vice versa. The former follows directly from the definition of B′. For the other direction we can use the following definitions: x ∧ y := xy, x ∨ y := xy + x + y, ¬(x) := x +1. This observation also implies that the structures B and B′ are interdefinable. In most of our computations in this paper we will consider Ba as a ring as above. The argument above shows this does not change what is a term function of Ba or what is first-order definable over Ba. The following theorem is essential in the theory of ω-categorical structures: Theorem 3 (Engeler, Ryll-Nardzewski, Svenonius). The structure A is ω- categorical if and only if Aut(A) is oligomorphic, i.e. for all n it has finitely many n-orbits. The following two corollaries are easy consequences of Theorem 3. Corollary 4. Let A be an ω-categorical structure and f be a function or a relation on the universe of A such that every permutation of Aut(A) preserves f. Then f is first-order definable over A. Corollary 5. Let C, C1, C2,..., Ck be some functional reducts of an algebra A. Then the following two conditions are equivalent: • Aut(C1) ∩ Aut(C2) ∩ ... ∩ Aut(Ck) = Aut(C) • All functions of C1 ∪C2 ∪...∪Ck can be defined from C, and all functions of C can be defined from C1 ∪ C2 ..