Degree spectra of prime models

We consider the Turing degrees of prime models of complete decidable theories. In particular we show that every complete decidable atomic theory has a prime model whose elementary diagram is low. We combine the construction used in the proof with other constructions to show that complete decidable atomic theories have low prime models with added properties.If we have a complete decidable atomic theory with all types of the theory computable, we show that for every degree d with 0 < d < 0', there is a prime model with elementary diagram of degree d. Indeed, this is a corollary of the fact that if T is a complete decidable theory and L is a computable set of c.e. partial types of T, then for any degree d > 0, T has a d-decidable model omitting the nonprincipal types listed by L.

Indiscernibles and decidable models

Ehrenfeucht and Mostowski [3] introduced the notion of indiscernibles and proved that every first order theory has a model with an infinite set of order indiscernibles. Since their work, techniques involving indiscernibles have proved to be extremely useful for constructing models with various specialized properties. In this paper and in a sequel [5], we investigate the effective content of Ehrenfeucht's and Mostowski's result. In this paper we consider the question of which decidable theories have decidable models with infinite recursive sets of indiscernibles. In §1, using some basic facts from stability theory, we show that certain large classes of decidable theories have decidable models with infinite recursive sets of indiscernibles. For example, we show that every ω-stable decidable theory and every stable theory which possesses a certain strong decidability property called ∃Q-decidability have such models. In §2 we construct several examples of decidable theories which have no decidable models with infinite recursive sets of indiscernibles. These examples show that our hypothesis for our positive results in §1 are necessary. Finally in §3 we give two applications of our results. First as an easy application of our results in §1, we show that every ω-stable decidable theory has uncountable models which realize only recursive types. Also our counterexamples in §2 allow us to answer negatively two questions of Baldwin and Kueker [1] concerning the effectiveness of their elimination of Ramsey quantifiers for certain theories.In [5], we show that in general the problem of finding an infinite set of indiscernibles in a decidable model is recursively equivalent to finding a path through a recursive infinite branching tree. Similarly, we show that the problem of finding an co-type of a set of indiscernibles in a decidable ω-categorical theory is recursively equivalent to finding a path through a highly recursive finitely branching tree.

Vaught's theorem recursively revisited

In this paper we investigate the relationship between the number of countable and decidable models of a complete theory. The number of decidable models will be determined in two ways, in §1 with respect to abstract isomorphism type, and in §2 with respect to recursive isomorphism type.Definition 1. A complete theory is (α, β) if the number of countable models of T, up to abstract isomorphism, is β, and similarly the number of decidable models of T is α.Definition 2. A model is ω-decidable if ∣∣= ω and for an effective listing {θn∣n < ω} of all sentences in the language of Th() augmented by new constant symbols i*, i < ω, {n ∣〈, i〉i<ω ⊨ θn} is recursive, where i interprets i* (in these terms, is decidable if is abstractly isomorphic to an ω-decidable model).Definition 3. A complete theory is (α, β)r if it is (γ, β) for some γ and it has exactly αω-decidable models up to recursive isomorphism.Specifically we will show in §1 that there is a (2, ω) theory, and in §2 that although there is a (2, 2ω) theory, there is no (2, β)r theory for any β, β < 2ω.

A complete, decidable theory with two decidable models

A well-known result of Vaught's is that no complete theory has exactly two nonisomorphic countable models. The main result of this paper is that there is a complete decidable theory with exactly two nonisomorphic decidable models.A model is decidable if it has a decidable satisfaction predicate. To be more precise, let T be a decidable theory, let {θn∣n < ω} be an effective enumeration of all formulas in L(T), and let be a countable model of T. For any indexing E = {ai∣ i < ω} of ∣∣, and any formula ϕ ∈ L(T), let ‘ϕE’ denote the result of substituting ‘ai’ for every free occurrence of ‘xi’ in ϕ, i < ω. Then is decidable just in case, for some indexing E of ∣∣, {n ∣ ⊨ θnE} is a recursive set of integers. It is easy to show that the decidability of a model does not depend on the choice of the effective enumeration of the formulas in L(T); we omit details. By a simple ‘effectivization’ of Henkin's proof of the completeness theorem (see Chang [1]) we haveFact 1. Every decidable consistent theory has a decidable model.Assume next that T is a complete decidable theory and {θn ∣ n < ω} is an effective enumeration of all formulas of L(T).