Related papers: Impredicativity and Trees with Gap Condition: A Se…
These are the lecture notes of an introductory course on ordinal analysis. Our selection of topics is guided by the aim to give a complete and direct proof of a mathematical independence result: Kruskal's theorem for binary trees is…
Harvey Friedman's gap condition on embeddings of finite labelled trees plays an important role in combinatorics (proof of the graph minor theorem) and mathematical logic (strong independence results). In the present paper we show that the…
It is generally accepted that H. Friedman's gap condition is closely related to iterated collapsing functions from ordinal analysis. But what precisely is the connection? We offer the following answer: In a previous paper we have shown that…
We introduce ordinal collapsing principles that are inspired by proof theory but have a set theoretic flavor. These principles are shown to be equivalent to iterated $\Pi^1_1$-comprehension and the existence of admissible sets, over weak…
In this paper we give an overview of an essential part of a Pi^0_1 ordinal analysis of Peano Arithmetic (PA) as presented by Beklemishev. This analysis is mainly performed within the polymodal provability logic GLP. We reflect on ways of…
The Kruskal-Friedman theorem asserts: in any infinite sequence of finite trees with ordinal labels, some tree can be embedded into a later one, by an embedding that respects a certain gap condition. This strengthening of the original…
This paper is a prelude and elaboration on Proofs that Modify Proofs. Here we present an ordinal analysis of a fragment of the $\mu$-calculus around the strength of parameter-free $\Pi^1_2$-comprehension using the same approach as that…
We develop the abstract framework for a proof-theoretic analysis of theories with scope beyond ordinal numbers, resulting in an analog of Ordinal Analysis aimed at the study of theorems of complexity $\Pi^1_2$. This is done by replacing the…
In this paper we give an ordinal analysis of the theory of second order arithmetic. We do this by working with proof trees -- that is, "deductions" which may not be well-founded. Working in a suitable theory, we are able to represent…
In a constructive setting, no concrete formulation of ordinal numbers can simultaneously have all the properties one might be interested in; for example, being able to calculate limits of sequences is constructively incompatible with…
Schmerl and Beklemishev's work on iterated reflection achieves two aims: It introduces the important notion of $\Pi^0_1$-ordinal, characterizing the $\Pi^0_1$-theorems of a theory in terms of transfinite iterations of consistency; and it…
We introduce two operads which own the set of planar forests as a basis. With its usual product and two other products defined by different types of graftings, the algebra of planar rooted trees H becomes an algebra over these operads. The…
The classical Goodstein process, defined via hereditary base-$k$ exponential normal form, is a well-known example of a principle unprovable in Peano Arithmetic. In this paper, we generalize this framework by constructing a new Goodstein…
We show that the existence of a Pi^{1}_{N}-indescribable cardinal over the Zermelo-Fraenkel's set theory ZF is proof-theoretically reducible to iterations of Mostowski collapsings and lower Mahlo operations. Furthermore we describe a…
For fixed $t\ge 2$, we consider the class of representations of $1$ as sum of unit fractions whose denominators are powers of $t$ or equivalently the class of canonical compact $t$-ary Huffman codes or equivalently rooted $t$-ary plane…
The first-order theory of addition over the natural numbers, known as Presburger arithmetic, is decidable in double exponential time. Adding an uninterpreted unary predicate to the language leads to an undecidable theory. We sharpen the…
The study of well quasi-orders, wqo, is a cornerstone of combinatorics and within wqo theory Kruskal's theorem plays a crucial role. Extending previous proof-theoretic results, we calculate the $\Pi^1_1$ ordinals of two different versions…
Several theorems about the equivalence of familiar theories of reverse mathematics with certain well-ordering principles have been proved by recursion-theoretic and combinatorial methods (Friedman, Marcone, Montalban et al.) and with…
We propose $\omega$MSO$\Join$BAPA, an expressive logic for describing countable structures, which subsumes and transcends both Counting Monadic Second-Order Logic (CMSO) and Boolean Algebra with Presburger Arithmetic (BAPA). We show that…
We construct here an iterative evaluation of all PR map codes: progress of this iteration is measured by descending complexity within "Ordinal" O := N[\omega] of polynomials in one indeterminate, ordered lexicographically. Non-infinit…