On n-dependent groups and fields II

We continue the study of n-dependent groups, fields and related structures, largely motivated by the conjecture that every n-dependent field is dependent. We provide evidence toward this conjecture by showing that every infinite n-dependent valued field of positive characteristic is henselian, obtaining a variant of Shelah’s Henselianity Conjecture in this case and generalizing a recent result of Johnson for dependent fields. Additionally, we prove a result on intersections of type-definable connected components over generic sets of parameters in n-dependent groups, generalizing Shelah’s absoluteness of $G^{00}$ in dependent theories and relative absoluteness of $G^{00}$ in $2$ -dependent theories. In an effort to clarify the scope of this conjecture, we provide new examples of strictly $2$ -dependent fields with additional structure, showing that Granger’s examples of non-degenerate bilinear forms over dependent fields are $2$ -dependent. Along the way, we obtain some purely model-theoretic results of independent interest: we show that n-dependence is witnessed by formulas with all but one variable singletons; provide a type-counting criterion for $2$ -dependence and use it to deduce $2$ -dependence for compositions of dependent relations with arbitrary binary functions (the Composition Lemma); and show that an expansion of a geometric theory T by a generic predicate is dependent if and only if it is n-dependent for some n, if and only if the algebraic closure in T is disintegrated. An appendix by Martin Bays provides an explicit isomorphism in the Kaplan-Scanlon-Wagner theorem.