We prove the following result: there is a family of subsets of ω such that for every stable coloring hyperarithmetical in R and every finite collection of Turing functionals, there is an infinite homogeneous set H for c such that none of the finitely many functionals map to an infinite cohesive set for R. This provides a partial answer to a question in computable combinatorics, whether is omnisciently computably reducible to .
The vs.problem is a question in computable combinatorics that aims to clarify the relationship between two well-studied combinatorial consequences of Ramsey’s theorem for pairs in terms of their effective content. Recently solved in its original form by Monin and Patey [15], it has given rise to several related and more general problems, as we detail further below. In this article, we establish a new partial results towards the resolution of one of the principal outstanding questions in this inquiry.
For completeness, and also to fix some notation, we begin by briefly reviewing the most relevant definitions below. We refer the reader to Hirschfeldt [6, Chapter 6] for a more thorough discussion and overview of computable combinatorics. We assume familiarity with computability theory and reverse mathematics, and refer to Soare [21] and Simpson [20], respectively, for background on these subjects. We also assume the basics of Weihrauch reducibility and computable reducibility, and refer, e.g., to Brattka, Gherardi, and Pauly [1] for a detailed survey, or, e.g., to Cholak, Dzhafarov, Hirschfeldt, and Patey [3, Section 1] for an introduction aimed more specifically at the kinds of questions we will be dealing with here.
Fix numbers .
For every set , let .
A k-coloring of is a map .
A set is homogeneous for c if is constant.
A k-coloring of is stable if exists for all .
A set is limit-homogeneous for a stable if is the same for all .
When , we call a k-coloring of pairs, or simply a coloring of pairs if k is understood. We will write in place of .
The following definition is somewhat nonstandard and technical, but it will simplify the presentation in the sequel.
Let be a family of functions .
R is a bounded family of functions if for all n there is a k so that .
For , R is a k-bounded family of functions if for all n and x.
A set X is cohesive for R if for each n there is a such that for all but finitely many .
The more typical definition of cohesiveness is with respect to a family of subsets of ω, for which a set X is cohesive if for each n, either or is finite. Of course, if we identify sets with their characteristic functions then we see that this is just the same as being cohesive for a 2-bounded family of functions. We return to this below.
We follow the now-standard practice of regarding statements of second-order arithmetic as problems, equipped with a set of instances, and for each instance, a set of solutions, all coded or represented by subsets of (see [3], Definition 1.1). This facilitates their study both in the framework of reverse mathematics and in terms of Weihrauch and computable reducibilities. We shall not be explicit about this identification moving forward, as it is obvious for all of the principles we will be looking at. These are the following.
Ramsey’s theorem is the statement that for all , every has an infinite homogeneous set.
Stable Ramsey’s theorem for pairs, denoted , is the restriction of Ramsey’s theorem to stable colorings of pairs.
Thesubset principle, denoted , is the statement for all , every stable has an infinite limit-homogeneous set.
The cohesiveness principle for bounded families, denoted , is the principle that every bounded family of functions has an infinite cohesive set.
For fixed , denotes the restriction of Ramsey’s theorem to k-colorings of .
For fixed , and denote the restrictions of and , respectively, to k-colorings.
For fixed , is the restriction of to k-bounded families of functions.
For , the traditional notation for is , and we shall follow this below. However, we can really use the various restrictions of defined above interchangeably, as the following lemma shows.
For all, we have.
Obviously, . It remains only to show that . For all , let be y written in binary, either truncated or prepended by to have exactly many digits. We view as a string, and write for its ith digit. Now fix a bounded family of functions . Let be the function for all . Then b is uniformly -computable. So we can fix a uniformly R-computable approximation to b, so that for all n. Define a 2-bounded family of functions as follows: for all ,
Then is a uniformly R-computable, and it is not difficult to see that every infinite cohesive set for is also cohesive for R. This completes the proof. □
A well-known fact about (in the parlance of Definitions 1.2 and 1.3) is that if X computes an infinite cohesive set for some 2-bounded family of functions , then so does any set Y satisfying and . By the preceding lemma, we see that the same holds for any bounded family of functions.
The relationship between the stable Ramsey’s theorem and the cohesiveness principle is the focus of a longstanding and ongoing investigation (see, e.g., [2,3,7,9–14,16,17]). We refer the reader to [3, Section 1] for a discussion of some of the history of these principles, and their larger significance in the exploration of the logical strength of combinatorial principles. For many years, the central open question in this investigation was the so-called vs.problem, which asked whether every ω-model of also satisfy . The answer was recently shown to be no.
The quest to obtain this solution, by multiple authors, gave rise many related questions, many of which hint more deeply at the combinatorial nature of the relationship between and , and which remain open. Our focus in this paper will be on a question that has arguably emerged as the most central among these. We first recall the definition of omniscient reducibility, introduced by Monin and Patey [14, Section 1.1].
Let and be problems.
is omnisciently computably reducible to if for every -instance X there is a -instance with the property that if is any -solution to then computes a -solution to X.
is omnisciently Weihrauch reducible to if there is a Turing functional Ψ such that for every -instance X there is a -instance with the property that if is any -solution to then is a -solution to X.
The reductions above are strong if the relevant computation of a -solution to X works with just as an oracle, rather than .
Is omnisciently computably reducible to , or to ?
We can at first compare this to the question of whether is simply computably reducible to (or for some k). Here, the answer is no. Indeed, it is easy to see that , and that for each specific k, also . Thus, in the computable reducibility question we could replace by (or by ), and then the answer follows by Theorem 1.5 since computable reducibility implies implication over ω-models. (Alternatively, it is easy to see that over ω-models, , , , and are equivalent, for all .)
Omniscient computable reducibility is more sensitive. While Question 1.7 is open, if we replace by there then the answer is known: is omnisciently computably reducible even to (see [3], Proposition 2.2). On the other hand, we can replace by , as these are easily seen to be omnisciently computably equivalent, and similarly for and . Here, it will be easier to work with and , so the rest of our discussion is formulated in terms of these principles.
For completeness, we note also that Dzhafarov [9, Theorem 3.2 and Corollary 3.5] showed that is not omnisciently Weihrauch, or strongly omnisciently computably, reducible to , while Patey [17, Corollary 3.3] showed that for all , is not strongly omnisciently computably reducible to . Thus, the relationships between different versions of the stable Ramsey’s theorem and the subset principle in terms of known reducibilities are fully understood.
As described in [3, Sections 1 and 2], Question 1.7 seems to encompass the true combinatorial core of the relationship between cohesiveness and homogeneity. Adapting the techniques from Monin and Patey’s resolution of the vs. problem, or the techniques from earlier, partial solutions by Dzhafarov [9] and Dzhafarov, Patey, Solomon, and Westrick [11] (who established that and , respectively) has so far proved difficult. There is thus a wide gap between the current results and Question 1.7. Our approach here is to narrow this gap by allowing for multiple functionals in the “backward” direction. For succinctness, we introduce the following definition:
Let and be problems.
is Weihrauch reducible towith finitely many functionals if there is a Turing functional Φ such that for every -instance X there is a finite set of Turing functionals such that is a -instance and if is any -solution to then there is a with a -solution to X.
is computably reducible towith finitely many functionals if for every -instance X there is a -instance and a finite set of Turing functionals such that if is any -solution to then there is a with a -solution to X.
is hyperarithmetically computably reducible towith finitely many functionals if for every -instance X there is a -instance hyperarithmetical in X and a finite set of Turing functionals such that if is any -solution to then there is a with a -solution to X.
is omnisciently computably reducible towith finitely many functionals if for every -instance X there is a -instance and a finite set of Turing functionals such that if is any -solution to then there is a with a -solution to X.
The basic relationships between the above reducibilities are as follows:
Note also that while Weihrauch reducibility with finitely many functionals is a generalization of Weihrauch reducibility, computable reducibility with finitely many functionals is a restriction of computable reducibility. A good example here is to look at and : as mentioned, , but it is easy to see that is Weihrauch reducible to with finitely many (in fact, two) functionals. We can now state our main result:
is not hyperarithmetically computably reducible towith finitely many functionals.
That is, we build a family of sets such that for every stable coloring hyperarithmetical in G and every finite collection of Turing functionals , there exists an infinite limit-homogeneous set H for c such that is not an infinite cohesive set for G, for any .
Our construction will force the instance G of to be non-hyperarithmetical. We do not know whether, in general, this is necessary, or whether there exists a witness to Theorem 1.9 that is hyperarithmetical, or perhaps arithemtical or even computable. Indeed, it is even possible that there is a computable instance of witnessing a negative answer to Question 1.7.
The rest of this paper is dedicated to a proof of Theorem 1.9. For ease of understanding, we organize this into two parts. In Section 2 we present a proof just for the case of stable 2-colorings. Then, in Section 3, we explain how the argument can be adapted to obtain the theorem in its full generality.
The proof of Monin and Patey [15] of Theorem 1.5 was announced after the original submission of this article. We have updated the introduction here to reflect this fact.
Construction
Our approach uses an elaboration on the forcing methods introduced by Dzhafarov [8] for building instances of , and by Cholak, Jockusch, and Slaman [4, Section 4] for building solutions to . With respect to the latter, our proof here has a crucial innovation. As in other applications, we force with Mathias conditions, defined below. But here, our reservoirs are not computable or low, or indeed absolute sets of any other kind. Rather, they are names for sets in the forcing language we use to build our instance. This allows us to control not just the instance and the solution separately, as is done, e.g., in [8] or [11], but also to control their join. We refer the reader to Shore [19, Chapter 3] and Sacks [18, Section IV.3] for background on forcing in arithmetic, and the latter specifically for an introduction to forcing over the hyperarithmetic hierarchy.
In what follows, several notions of forcing are defined. When no confusion can arise, we refer to the conditions and extension relation in each of these simply as “conditions” and “extension”, without explicitly labeling these by the forcing itself.
Generic instances of
Let be the notion of forcing whose conditions are tuples as follows:
;
for each ;
f is a function .
A condition extends p, written , if:
;
;
for all ;
if for some then for all .
Given a -condition , we also write and for and f, respectively. If is a sufficiently generic filter on then we can define
and . Note that this is an instance of , and that by genericity, there are infinitely many n such that exists, and infinitely many n such that does not exist.
The forcing language and forcing relation are defined inductively as usual, and we use and as names for and . More generally, we help ourselves to names (or -names) for all definable sets in the forcing language and use these as parameters in other definitions.
Letbe aformula in the forcing language that is forced by some condition p. Let q be the condition that is the same as p, only there is somesuch thatand. Then q forces.
As we are employing strong forcing, it suffices to consider the case that is . Thus, can be put in the form , where ψ has only bounded quantifiers and has no free variables other than x. If q does not force this formula then by definition there is some and some such that r forces . Now, as has no free variables, it can be put in quantifier-free conjunctive normal form. But the fact that each clause in this conjunction is forced by r depends only on the strings . So let be the condition that is the same as r, except that . Then still forces , and hence also . But is an extension of p, and hence witnesses that p could not force or , a contradiction. □
Ifis a sufficiently generic filter onthen there is no infinite cohesive set forwhich is low over.
By the remark following Lemma 1.4, it suffices to show that has no -computable infinite cohesive set. Fix any functional Δ, and any condition p. We exhibit an extension of p forcing that is not an infinite cohesive set for . This density fact and the genericity of will yield the lemma. Let . Let q be any extension of p with and . If q forces that for each and each there is an such that and , then we can take q to be the desired extension. So suppose otherwise. Then there is an , a , and an such that no extension of r forces that there is an with and . In this case, let s be the condition that is the same as r, except that . Then and forces that for all we have . □
In the next section, we assemble the pieces to diagonalize all stable colorings hyperarithmetical in our generic instance of . We formualte the pieces for a fixed hyperarithmetical operator Γ, and then apply them across all such operators in the final proof. This forces our filter to be hyperarithmetically generic, and hence, as remarked earlier, to be non-hyperarithmetical.
Generic limit-homogeneous sets
Throughout this section, let Γ be a fixed hyperarithmetical operator, and let be fixed Turing functionals. Let be a fixed -condition forcing that is a stable coloring with no infinite limit-homogeneous set which is low over . For each we let be a name for the set .
Let be the notion of forcing whose conditions are tuples as follows:
p is a -condition extending ;
is a finite set for each , and p forces that ;
is a -name, and p forces that is an infinite set which is low over , and .
A condition extends if:
;
for each ;
q forces that for each , and that .
Thus, we can think of -condition as p, together with a pair of Mathias conditions, and , that share a common reservoir.
For the remainder of this section, let be a fixed collection of Turing functionals.
The collection of-conditionswith the following property is dense below: there exists a-conditionand a maximal subset M ofsuch that for all,forces that there is asuch thatfor all finite setsand all.
Let be given. We exhibit a as above below p. Fix an enumeration of all pairs . Define , and let be the -condition . By induction, suppose that we have defined for some , along with some -condition . Let be the -st element of our enumeration of . If there is a condition extending such that q forces there is a such that for all finite sets and all , let and let be such a . Otherwise, let and let . Clearly, and satisfy the conclusion of the lemma. □
For the duration of this section, let and M as above be fixed.
Let be the restriction of to conditions extending of the form .
To visually distinguish -conditions from more general -extensions of , we denote the -condition by . Note that is of course an -condition.
We now assemble a couple of density facts that we will use to prove our theorem.
Letbe an-condition. The collection of-condition q for which there exists an-conditionextending, and satisfyingfor each, is dense below p.
Fix any . Let q be any extension of r deciding, for each , if there is an in . If for some , q forces that there is no such x, then q forces that . But as , we have that q forces that is an infinite set which is low over , and hence that is an infinite set which is low over . But by assumption, forces that there is no such set contained in , so since this is a contradiction. Thus, it must be that q forces, for each , that there is an in . We can thus fix an for each such that q forces that . Let for each i, and let ; then witnesses that q is the desired extension. □
The next lemma facilitates the crucial step of reflecting a -condition into .
Letbe an-condition, and assume thatfor some. For all,, and, the collection of-conditions q with the following property is dense below p: there exists an-conditionextendingand numbersandsuch that q forces thatand.
Fix any . Consider the formula of two set variables asserting:
and partition ;
for each , each , and each finite set it is not the case that and .
Let be the formula . Then is also , and we can thus fix some that decides this formula.
Suppose first that forces . Let be the condition that is the same as except that for each . We claim that forces . Indeed, as is and forces that is low over , it follows that there is a formula that forces is equivalent to . Since we have that , and so this equivalence is still forced by and . Thus, forces , and hence so does by Lemma 2.2. Now it follows that forces , as desired.
By the uniformity of the low basis theorem, we can fix names and and a condition forcing that is low over and holds. We may further assume that decides, for each , whether or not is infinite. Since forces that is infinite and , we can fix such that forces that is infinite. But now consider the -condition . This is an extension (in ) of , and forces that for all finite subset F of and all . By maximality of M, this means that should be in M, even though we assumed it was not. This is a contradiction.
We conclude that actually forces , and so some must force
In particular, there is an , an , and a finite set F such that q forces that and that and . Let and , and let . Then q is the desired extension of r, as witnessed by . □
Putting it all together
We are now ready to prove the main theorem of this section, which is Theorem 1.9 for stable 2-colorings. In fact, we prove following stronger result which clearly implies it.
Letbe a hyperarithmetically generic filter on. Then for every stable coloringhyperarithmetical in, and every finite collection of Turing functionals, there exists an infinite limit-homogeneous set L for c such thatis not an infinite cohesive set for, for any.
Let c and be given. Fix a hyperarithmetical operator Γ such that . If c has an infinite limit-homogeneous set which is low over , then we can take this to be L and then we are done by Lemma 2.3. So assume otherwise, and choose forcing that is a stable coloring with no infinite limit-homogeneous set which is low over . Define , , and as in the previous section. Since is generic, we may fix a , a -condition , and a maximal subset M of as in Lemma 2.5. We define a sequence of -conditions
with for all .
If there is an such that for all , let . Now given for some z, apply Lemma 2.7 to find an extension with and for each . Thus, is an infinite limit homogeneous set for , and by assumption, and the definition of M, we have for all and all sufficiently large x. In particular, is not an infinite cohesive set for , as desired.
Now suppose that for each there is at least one with . Let be any extension of in such that for some , and denote the least such n by . Let for each , and , so that . Assume next that we have defined for some z. If z is even, define as in the preceding case, thereby ensuring that for each . Next, suppose z is odd. Assume we have a fixed map h from the odd integers onto the set
in which the pre-image of every element in the range is infinite. Say . We then apply Lemma 2.8 to find extending with such that for some and we have that forces and .
Now, let for each , which is an infinite limit-homogeneous set for . If, for each , there is such that is an infinite cohesive set for , then by genericity of and the definition of M, it must be that . For each , there are infinitely many odd numbers z such that , and by construction, for each such z, there is an and an such that and . Denote the least such i by . Thus, for each there must be a such that for infinitely many z with . Fix with and , and denote the latter by i. Then there are infinitely many x such that and , and infinitely many x such that and . Thus, is not cohesive for , a contradiction.
We conclude that there is an such that is not an infinite cohesive set for , for any , as was to be shown. □
Extensions to arbitrary colorings
To prove Theorem 1.9 in full generality, we need to modify our construction of the family . Specifically, whereas a 3-bounded family of functions sufficed to defeat all potential stable 2-colorings, we will in general need a -bounded family to defeat all stable k-colorings. For this reason, we introduce the following modification of the forcing notion defined earlier.
Let be the notion of forcing whose conditions are tuples as follows:
;
for each ;
b is a function , and for all ;
f is a function , and if for some then .
A condition extends p, written , if:
;
;
;
for all ;
if for some then for all .
We write , , for , b, and f, as before. It is clear that if is a sufficiently generic filter on then , where again , is now an instance of . Everything else transfers from to analogously, with obvious changes. In particular, this is true of Lemmas 2.2 and 2.3.
Now, fix a hyperarithmetical operator Γ, and Turing functionals . Suppose is a -condition forcing, for some , that is a stable coloring with no infinite limit-homogeneous set which is low over . For each , let be a name for the set . We define a suitable modification of the forcing notion .
Let be the notion of forcing whose conditions are tuples as follows:
p is a -condition extending ;
is a finite set for each , and p forces that ;
is a -name, and p forces that is an infinite set which is low over , and .
A condition extends if:
;
for each ;
q forces that for each , and that .
We get an analogue of Lemma 2.5, stated below. The proof is entirely the same.
The collection of-conditionswith the following property is dense below: there exists a-conditionand a maximal subset M ofsuch that for all,forces that there is asuch thatfor all finite setsand all.
Fixing and M as above, we can define an analogue of the restricted forcing of Definition 2.6, and obtain analogues of Lemmas 2.7 and 2.8. For clarity, we include the definition and statements, and omit the proofs, which carry over from above, mutatis mutandis.
Let be the restriction of to conditions extending of the form .
As before, we write for .
Letbe an-condition. The collection of-conditions q for which there exists an-conditionextending, and satisfyingfor each, is dense below p.
Letbe an-condition., and assume thatandfor some. For all,, and, the collection of-conditions q with the following property is dense below p: there exists an-conditionextendingand numbersandsuch that q forces thatand.
Everything can now be put together as in the proof of Theorem 2.9 above, to prove the theorem below, from which Theorem 1.9 follows.
Letbe a hyperarithmetically generic filter on. Then for everyand every stable coloringhyperarithmetical in, and every finite collection of Turing functionals, there exists an infinite limit-homogeneous set L for c such thatis not an infinite cohesive set for, for any.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
Dzhafarov was supported by a Collaboration Grant for Mathematicians from the Simons Foundation and by a Focused Research Group grant from the National Science Foundation of the United States, DMS-1854355. Patey was partially supported by grant ANR “ACTC” #ANR-19-CE48-0012-01. The authors thank the anonymous referee for helpful comments.
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