The weakness of finding descending sequences in ill-founded linear orders
Abstract
We explore the Weihrauch degree of the problems ``find a bad sequence in a non-well quasi order'' () and ``find a descending sequence in an ill-founded linear order'' (). We prove that is strictly Weihrauch reducible to , correcting our mistaken claim in [arXiv:2010.03840]. This is done by separating their respective first-order parts. On the other hand, we show that and have the same finitary and deterministic parts, confirming that and have very similar uniform computational strength. We prove that K\"onig's lemma and the problem of enumerating a given non-empty countable closed subset of are not Weihrauch reducible to or , resolving two main open questions raised in [arXiv:2010.03840]. We also answer the question, raised in [arXiv:1804.10968], on the existence of a ``parallel quotient'' operator, and study the behavior of and under the quotient with some known problems.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2401.11807,
title = {The weakness of finding descending sequences in ill-founded linear orders},
author = {Jun Le Goh and Arno Pauly and Manlio Valenti},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2401.11807},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
This is an extended version of the homonymous paper published in: Twenty Years of Theoretical and Practical Synergies. CiE 2024. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14773, pp. 339-350