English

A corrected strategy for proving no finite variable axiomatisation exists for RRA

Logic 2021-09-06 v1

Abstract

We show that if for all finite cc there is a pair of non-isomorphic finite digraphs satisfying some additional conditions, one of which is that they cannot be distinguished in a certain cc-colour node colouring game, then there can be no axiomatisation of the class of representable relation algebras in any first-order theory of arbitrary quantifier-depth using only finitely many variables. This corrects the proposed strategy of Hirsch and Hodkinson, \emph{Relation algebras by games}, North-Holland (2002), Problem 1. However, even for c=2c=2, no pair of non-isomorphic graphs indistinguishable in the game is currently known.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2109.01357,
  title  = {A corrected strategy for proving no finite variable axiomatisation exists for RRA},
  author = {Rob Egrot and Robin Hirsch},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2109.01357},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

This note is extracted from an earlier version of arXiv:2008.01329. A later version of this latter paper will omit this material