English

Anti-classification results for groups acting freely on the line

Logic 2023-01-16 v2

Abstract

We explore countable ordered Archimedean groups from the point of view of descriptive set theory. We introduce the space of Archimedean left-orderings Ar(G)\mathrm{Ar}(G) for a given countable group GG, and prove that the equivalence relation induced by the natural action of GL2(Q)\mathrm{GL}_2(\mathbb{Q}) on Ar(Q2)\mathrm{Ar}(\mathbb{Q}^2) is not concretely classifiable. Then we analyze the isomorphism relation for countable ordered Archimedean groups, and pin its complexity in terms of the hierarchy of Hjorth, Kechris and Louveau. In particular, we show that its potential class is not Π30\boldsymbol{\Pi}^0_3. This topological constraint prevents classifying Archimedean groups using countable subsets of reals. We obtain analogous results for the bi-embeddability relation, and we consider similar problems for circularly ordered groups, and o-minimal structures such as ordered divisible Abelian groups, and real closed fields. Our proofs combine classical results on Archimedean groups, the theory of Borel equivalence relations, and analyzing definable sets in the basic Cohen model and other models of Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory without choice.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2010.08049,
  title  = {Anti-classification results for groups acting freely on the line},
  author = {Filippo Calderoni and David Marker and Luca Motto Ros and Assaf Shani},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2010.08049},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

Accepted for publication in Advances in Mathematics, 38 pages. We added Subsection 5.3, which contains some strengthening of our results. In particular, Theorem 5.15 and Corollary 5.17 show that bi-embeddability on countable ordered archimedean groups is not classifiable by countable structures, and thus answer Question 5.14 from the previous version

R2 v1 2026-06-23T19:23:21.884Z