English

Contrasting the Halves of an Ahmad Pair

Logic 2025-12-01 v1

Abstract

We study Ahmad pairs in the Σ20\Sigma^0_2 enumeration degrees. (A,B)(A,B) is an Ahmad pair if A̸eBA \not \leq_e B and every Z<eAZ <_e A satisfies ZeBZ \leq_e B. We characterize the degrees that are the left halves of an Ahmad pair as those that are \lowww\lowww and join irreducible. We then show that the right half has to be \highh\highh giving a natural separation between the two halves which is a significant strengthening of previous work. We define a hierarchy of join irreducibility notions using which we characterize the left halves of Ahmad nn-pairs as those that are \lowww\lowww and nn-join irreducible, while the right halves are \highh\highh. This allows us to extend and clarify previous work to show that for any nn, there is a set AA which is the left half of an Ahmad nn-pair but not of an Ahmad (n+1)(n+1)-pair. These results have new implications about the \forall \exists-theory of the Σ20\Sigma^0_2 e-degrees as a partial order and also provide a new Π3\Pi_3 definition of \lowww\lowww as well as \highh\highh.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2511.22901,
  title  = {Contrasting the Halves of an Ahmad Pair},
  author = {Karthik Ravishankar},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.22901},
  year   = {2025}
}

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26 pages