English

Definability and decidability for rings of integers in totally imaginary fields

Number Theory 2024-02-21 v3 Logic

Abstract

We show that the ring of integers of Qtr\mathbb{Q}^{\text{tr}} is existentially definable in the ring of integers of Qtr(i)\mathbb{Q}^{\text{tr}}(i), where Qtr\mathbb{Q}^{\text{tr}} denotes the field of all totally real numbers. This implies that the ring of integers of Qtr(i)\mathbb{Q}^{\text{tr}}(i) is undecidable and first-order non-definable in Qtr(i)\mathbb{Q}^{\text{tr}}(i). More generally, when LL is a totally imaginary quadratic extension of a totally real field KK, we use the unit groups R×R^\times of orders ROLR\subseteq \mathcal{O}_L to produce existentially definable totally real subsets XOLX\subseteq \mathcal{O}_L. Under certain conditions on KK, including the so-called JR-number of OK\mathcal{O}_K being the minimal value JR(OK)=4\text{JR}(\mathcal{O}_K) = 4, we deduce the undecidability of OL\mathcal{O}_L. This extends previous work which proved an analogous result in the opposite case JR(OK)=\text{JR}(\mathcal{O}_K) = \infty. In particular, unlike prior work, we do not require that LL contains only finitely many roots of unity.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2207.00140,
  title  = {Definability and decidability for rings of integers in totally imaginary fields},
  author = {Caleb Springer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2207.00140},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

11 pages. Small correction to Lemma 3.2 and the proof of Theorem 3.3. Added Remark 3.4