English

Siblings of an $\aleph_0$-categorical relational structure

Logic 2019-05-29 v2

Abstract

A sibling of a relational structure RR is any structure SS which can be embedded into RR and, vice versa, in which RR can be embedded. Let sib(R)sib(R) be the number of siblings of RR, these siblings being counted up to isomorphism. Thomass\'e conjectured that for countable relational structures made of at most countably many relations, sib(R)sib(R) is either 11, countably infinite, or the size of the continuum; but even showing the special case sib(R)=1sib(R)=1 or infinite is unsettled when RR is a countable tree. This is related to Bonato-Tardif conjecture asserting that for every tree TT the number of trees which are sibling of TT is either one or infinite. We prove that if RR is countable and 0\aleph_{0}-categorical, then indeed sib(R)sib(R) is one or infinite. Furthermore, sib(R)sib(R) is one if and only if RR is finitely partitionable in the sense of Hodkinson and Macpherson. The key tools in our proof are the notion of monomorphic decomposition of a relational structure introduced in a paper by Pouzet and Thi\'ery 2013 and studied further by Oudrar and Pouzet 2015, and a result of Frasnay 1984.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1811.04185,
  title  = {Siblings of an $\aleph_0$-categorical relational structure},
  author = {Claude Laflamme and Maurice Pouzet and Norbert Sauer and Robert Woodrow},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1811.04185},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

34 pp