English

Topological models of arithmetic

Logic 2020-11-11 v3

Abstract

Ali Enayat had asked whether there is a nonstandard model of Peano arithmetic (PA) that can be represented as Q,,\langle\mathbb{Q},\oplus,\otimes\rangle, where \oplus and \otimes are continuous functions on the rationals Q\mathbb{Q}. We prove, affirmatively, that indeed every countable model of PA has such a continuous presentation on the rationals. More generally, we investigate the topological spaces that arise as such topological models of arithmetic. The reals R\mathbb{R}, the reals in any finite dimension Rn\mathbb{R}^n, the long line and the Cantor space do not, and neither does any Suslin line; many other spaces do; the status of the Baire space is open.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1808.01270,
  title  = {Topological models of arithmetic},
  author = {Ali Enayat and Joel David Hamkins and Bartosz Wcisło},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1808.01270},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

17 pages. Commentary can be made about this article on the second author's blog at http://jdh.hamkins.org/topological-models-of-arithmetic. In this version (v3), small misprints of the previous version are corrected, some of the results are finetuned, and an example of an uncountable polish space that supports a continuous model of Successor Arithmetic is presented (Remark 17b)

R2 v1 2026-06-23T03:23:58.943Z