We study topological realizations of countable Borel equivalence relations, including realizations by continuous actions of countable groups, with additional desirable properties. Some examples include minimal realizations on any perfect Polish space, realizations as $K_σ$ relations, and realizations by continuous actions on the Baire space. We also consider questions related to realizations of specific important equivalence relations, like Turing and arithmetical equivalence. We focus in particular on the problem of realization by continuous actions on compact spaces and more specifically subshifts. This leads to the study of properties of subshifts, including universality of minimal subshifts, and a characterization of amenability of a countable group in terms of subshifts. Moreover we consider a natural universal space for actions and equivalence relations and study the descriptive and topological properties in this universal space of various properties, like, e.g., compressibility, amenability or hyperfiniteness.
We prove a number of results about countable Borel equivalence relations with forcing constructions and arguments. These results reveal hidden regularity properties of Borel complete sections on certain orbits. As consequences they imply the nonexistence of Borel complete sections with certain features.
We show that every basis for the countable Borel equivalence relations strictly above $\mathbb{E}_0$ under measure reducibility is uncountable, thereby ruling out natural generalizations of the Glimm-Effros dichotomy. We also push many known results concerning the abstract structure of the measure reducibility hierarchy to its base, using arguments substantially simpler than those previously employed.
We consider countable Borel equivalence relations on quotient Borel spaces. We prove a generalization of the Feldman-Moore representation theorem, but provide some examples showing that other very simple properties of countable equivalence relations on standard Borel spaces may fail in the context of nonsmooth quotients.
We characterize the structural impediments to the existence of Borel perfect matchings for acyclic locally countable Borel graphs admitting a Borel selection of finitely many ends from their connected components. In particular, this yields the existence of Borel matchings for such graphs of degree at least three. As a corollary, it follows that acyclic locally countable Borel graphs of degree at least three generating $μ$-hyperfinite equivalence relations admit $μ$-measurable matchings. We establish the analogous result for Baire measurable matchings in the locally finite case, and provide a c…
Given a countable Borel equivalence relation E and a countable group G, we study the problem of when a Borel action of G on X/E can be lifted to a Borel action of G on X.
We show that for any infinite countable group $G$ and for any free Borel action $G \curvearrowright X$ there exists an equivariant class-bijective Borel map from $X$ to the free part $\mathrm{Free}(2^G)$ of the $2$-shift $G \curvearrowright 2^G$. This implies that any Borel structurability which holds for the equivalence relation generated by $G \curvearrowright \mathrm{Free}(2^G)$ must hold a fortiori for all equivalence relations coming from free Borel actions of $G$. A related consequence is that the Borel chromatic number of $\mathrm{Free}(2^G)$ is the maximum among Borel chromatic numbers…
In recent years, much work in descriptive set theory has been focused on the Borel complexity of naturally occurring classification problems, in particular, the study of countable Borel equivalence relations and their structure under the quasi-order of Borel reducibility. Following the approach of Louveau and Rosendal for the study of analytic equivalence relations, we study countable Borel quasi-orders. In this paper we are concerned with universal countable Borel quasi-orders, i.e. countable Borel quasi-orders above all other countable Borel quasi-orders with regard to Borel reducibility. We…
We observe that Hall's free projective extension $P \mapsto F(P)$ of partial planes is a Borel map, and use a modification of the construction introduced in [9] to conclude that the class of countable non-Desarguesian projective planes is Borel complete. In the process, we also rediscover the main result of [7] on the realizability of every group as the group of collineations of some projective plane. Finally, we use classical results of projective geometry to prove that the class of countable Pappian projective planes is Borel complete.
We provide dichotomy results characterizing when two disjoint analytic binary relations can be separated by a countable union of ${\bfΣ}^0_1 \!\times\! {\bfΣ}^0_ξ$ sets, or by a ${\bfΠ}^0_1 \!\times\! {\bfΠ}^0_ξ$ set.
For a continuous action of a countable discrete group $G$ on a Polish space $X$, a countable Borel partition $P$ of $X$ is called a generator if $G \cdot P := \{ gC : g \in G, C \in P \}$ generates the Borel $σ$-algebra of $X$. For $G = Z$, the Kolmogorov--Sinai theorem gives a measure-theoretic obstruction to the existence of finite generators: they do not exist in the presence of an invariant probability measure with infinite entropy. It was asked by Benjamin Weiss in the late 80s whether the nonexistence of any invariant probability measure guarantees the existence of a finite generator. We…
Boykin and Jackson recently introduced a property of countable Borel equivalence relations called Borel boundedness, which they showed is closely related to the union problem for hyperfinite equivalence relations. In this paper, we introduce a family of properties of countable Borel equivalence relations which correspond to combinatorial cardinal characteristics of the continuum in the same way that Borel boundedness corresponds to the bounding number $\mathfrak b$. We analyze some of the basic behavior of these properties, showing for instance that the property corresponding to the splitting …
We give, for each countable ordinal $ξ\geq 1$, an example of a ${\bfΔ}^0_2$ countable union of Borel rectangles that cannot be decomposed into countably many ${\bfΠ}^0_ξ$ rectangles. In fact, we provide a graph of a partial injection with disjoint domain and range, which is a difference of two closed sets, and which has no ${\bfΔ}^0_ξ$-measurable countable coloring.
Borel completeness of the class of countable Steiner triple systems
School of Mathematics\ University 24 South Section 1, First Ring Road\ , Sichuan 610065 China；School of Mathematics；Statistics\ Jiaotong University 3 Shangyuancun\ , Beijing 100044 China
There is a fascinating interplay and overlap between recursion theory and descriptive set theory. A particularly beautiful source of such interaction has been Martin's conjecture on Turing invariant functions. This longstanding open problem in recursion theory has connected to many problems in descriptive set theory, particularly in the theory of countable Borel equivalence relations. In this paper, we shall give an overview of some work that has been done on Martin's conjecture, and applications that it has had in descriptive set theory. We will present a long unpublished result of Slaman and…
We prove that in some cases definable chains of Borel partial orderings are necessarily countably cofinal. This includes the following cases: analytic chains, ROD chains in the Solovay model, and $Σ^1_2$ chains in the assumption that $ω_1^{L[x]}<ω_1$ for all reals $x$.
We study topological groups that can be defined as Polish, pro-countable abelian groups, as non-archimedean abelian groups or as quasi-countable abelian groups, i.e., Polish subdirect products of countable, discrete groups, endowed with the product topology. We characterize tame groups in this class, i.e., groups such that all orbit equivalence relations induced by their continuous actions on Polish spaces are Borel, and relatively tame groups $G$, i.e., groups such that every diagonal action $α\times β$ of $G$ induces a Borel orbit equivalence relation, provided that the actions $α$, $β$ of $…
We study Borel equivalence relations induced by Borel actions of tsi Polish groups on standard Borel spaces. We characterize when such an equivalence relation admits classification by countable structures using a variant of the $\mathbb G_0$-dichotomy. In particular, we find a class that serves as a base for non-classification by countable structures for these equivalence relations under Borel reducibility. We use this characterization together with the result of [B. D. Miller, to appear in the Journal of Mathematical Logic] to show that if such an equivalence relation admits classification by…
Let $E\subseteq F$ and $E'\subseteq F'$ be Borel equivalence relations on the standard Borel spaces $X$ and $Y$, respectively. The pair $(E,F)$ is simultaneously Borel reducible to the pair $(E',F')$ if there is a Borel function $f:X\to Y$ that is both a reduction from $E$ to $E'$ and a reduction from $F$ to $F'$. Simultaneous Borel embeddings and isomorphisms are defined analogously. We classify all pairs $E\subseteq F$ of smooth countable Borel equivalence relations up to simultaneous Borel bireducibility and biembeddability, and a significant portion of such pairs up to simultaneous Borel i…
In this work we study the uncountable Borel chromatic numbers, defined by Geschke (2011) as cardinal characteristics of the continuum, of low complexity graphs. We show that a strong form of locally countable graphs with compact totally disconnected set of vertices have Borel chromatic number bounded by the continuum of the ground model in the model obtained by adding $\aleph_2$ Laver reals. From this, we answer a question from Geschke and the second author (2022), and another question from Fisher, Friedman and Khomskii (2014) concerning regularity properties of subsets of the real line.
This paper deals with countable products of countable Borel equivalence relations and equivalence relations "just above" those in the Borel reducibility hierarchy. We show that if $E$ is strongly ergodic with respect to $μ$ then $E^\mathbb{N}$ is strongly ergodic with respect to $μ^\mathbb{N}$. We answer questions of Clemens and Coskey regarding their recently defined $Γ$-jump operations, in particular showing that the $\mathbb{Z}^2$-jump of $E_\infty$ is strictly above the $\mathbb{Z}$-jump of $E_\infty$. We study a notion of equivalence relations which can be classified by infinite sequences…
We prove that for a countable, commutative ring $R$, the class of countable $R$-modules either has only countably many isomorphism types, or else it is Borel complete. The machinery gives a succinct proof of the Borel completeness of TFAB, the class of torsion-free abelian groups. We also prove that for any countable ring $R$, both the class of left $R$-modules endowed with an endomorphism and the class of left $R$-modules with four named submodules are Borel complete.
Suppose that $X$ is a Polish space, $E$ is a countable Borel equivalence relation on $X$, and $μ$ is an $E$-invariant Borel probability measure on $X$. We consider the circumstances under which for every countable non-abelian free group $Γ$, there is a Borel sequence $(\cdot_r)_{r \in \mathbb{R}}$ of free actions of $Γ$ on $X$, generating subequivalence relations $E_r$ of $E$ with respect to which $μ$ is ergodic, with the further property that $(E_r)_{r \in \mathbb{R}}$ is an increasing sequence of relations which are pairwise incomparable under $μ$-reducibility. In particular, we show that if…
In this note, we analyze the classification problem for compact metrizable $G$-ambits for a countable discrete group $G$ from the point of view of descriptive set theory. More precisely, we prove that the topological conjugacy relation on the standard Borel space of compact metrizable $G$-ambits is Borel for every countable discrete group $G$.
A Borel equivalence relation on a Polish space is said to be countable if all of its equivalence classes are countable. Standard examples of countable Borel equivalence relations (on the space of subsets of the integers) that occur in recursion theory are: recursive isomorphism, Turing equivalence, arithmetic equivalence, etc. There is a canonical hierarchy of complexity of countable Borel equivalence relations imposed by the notion of Borel reducibility. We will survey results and conjectures concerning the problem of identifying the place in this hierarchy of these equivalence relations from…
Given a countable o-minimal theory T, we characterize the Borel complexity of isomorphism for countable models of T up to two model-theoretic invariants. If T admits a nonsimple type, then it is shown to be Borel complete by embedding the isomorphism problem for linear orders into the isomorphism problem for models of T. This is done by constructing models with specific linear orders in the tail of the Archimedean ladder of a suitable nonsimple type. If the theory admits no nonsimple types, then we use Mayer's characterization of isomorphism for such theories to compute invariants for countabl…
We prove that many seemingly simple theories have Borel complete reducts. Specifically, if a countable theory has uncountably many complete 1-types, then it has a Borel complete reduct. Similarly, if $Th(M)$ is not small, then $M^{eq}$ has a Borel complete reduct, and if a theory $T$ is not $ω$-stable, then the elementary diagram of some countable model of $T$ has a Borel complete reduct.
We study the complexity of the classification problem of conjugacy on dynamical systems on some compact metrizable spaces. Especially we prove that the conjugacy equivalence relation of interval dynamical systems is Borel bireducible to isomorphism equivalence relation of countable graphs. This solves a special case of the Hjorth's conjecture which states that every orbit equivalence relation induced by a continuous action of the group of all homeomorphisms of the closed unit interval is classifiable by countable structures. We also prove that conjugacy equivalence relation of Hilbert cube hom…
In this paper we show that it is relatively consistent with ZFC that every gamma-set is countable while not every strong measure zero set is countable. This answers a question of Paul Szeptycki. A set is a gamma-set iff every omega-cover contains a gamma-subcover. An open cover is an omega-cover iff every finite set is covered by some element of the cover. An open cover is a gamma-cover iff every element of the space is in all but finitely many elements of the cover. Gerlits and Nagy proved that every gamma-set has strong measure zero. We also show that is consistent that every strong gamma-se…
In this paper we prove three theorems about the theory of Borel sets in models of ZF without any form of the axiom of choice. We prove that if B is a G-delta-sigma set, then either B is countable or B contains a perfect subset. Second, we prove that if the real line is the countable union of countable sets, then there exists an F-sigma-delta set which is uncountable but contains no perfect subset. Finally, we construct a model of ZF in which we have an infinite Dedekind finite set of reals which is F-sigma-delta.
Let $F_{ω_1}$ be the countable admissible ordinal equivalence relation defined on ${}^ω2$ by $x \ F_{ω_1} \ y$ if and only if $ω_1^x = ω_1^y$. It will be shown that $F_{ω_1}$ is classifiable by countable structures and must be classified by structures of high Scott rank. If $E$ and $F$ are equivalence relations, then $E$ is almost Borel reducible to $F$ if and only if there is a Borel reduction of $E$ to $F$, except possibly on countably many $E$-classes. Let $E_{ω_1}$ denote the equivalence of order types of reals coding well-orderings. It will be shown that in the constructible universe $L$ …
In this paper we study the Borel structure of the space of left-orderings $\mathrm{LO}(G)$ of a group $G$ modulo the natural conjugacy action, and by using tools from descriptive set theory we find many examples of countable left-orderable groups such that the quotient space $\mathrm{LO}(G)/G$ is not standard. This answers a question of Deroin, Navas, and Rivas. We also prove that the countable Borel equivalence relation induced from the conjugacy action of $\mathbb{F}_{2}$ on $\mathrm{LO}(\mathbb{F}_{2})$ is universal, and leverage this result to provide many other examples of countable left-…
In this article, we give a full description of the Wadge degrees of Borel functions from $ω^ω$ to a better quasi ordering $\mathcal{Q}$. More precisely, for any countable ordinal $ξ$, we show that the Wadge degrees of $\mathbfΔ^0_{1+ξ}$-measurable functions $ω^ω\to\mathcal{Q}$ can be represented by countable joins of the $ξ$-th transfinite nests of $\mathcal{Q}$-labeled well-founded trees.
We prove a strong conceptual completeness theorem (in the sense of Makkai) for the infinitary logic $\mathcal L_{ω_1ω}$: every countable $\mathcal L_{ω_1ω}$-theory can be canonically recovered from its standard Borel groupoid of countable models, up to a suitable syntactical notion of equivalence. This implies that given two theories $(\mathcal L, \mathcal T)$ and $(\mathcal L', \mathcal T')$ (in possibly different languages $\mathcal L, \mathcal L'$), every Borel functor $\mathsf{Mod}(\mathcal L', \mathcal T') \to \mathsf{Mod}(\mathcal L, \mathcal T)$ between the respective groupoids of count…
For a class $\mathcal K$ of countable relational structures, a countable Borel equivalence relation $E$ is said to be $\mathcal K$-structurable if there is a Borel way to put a structure in $\mathcal K$ on each $E$-equivalence class. We study in this paper the global structure of the classes of $\mathcal K$-structurable equivalence relations for various $\mathcal K$. We show that $\mathcal K$-structurability interacts well with several kinds of Borel homomorphisms and reductions commonly used in the classification of countable Borel equivalence relations. We consider the poset of classes of $\…
Every permutation invariant Borel subset of the space of countable structures is definable in $\La_{ω_1ω}$ by a theorem of Lopez-Escobar. We prove variants of this theorem relative to fixed relations and fixed non-permutation invariant quantifiers. Moreover we show that for every closed subgroup $G$ of the symmetric group $S_{\infty}$, there is a closed binary quantifier $Q$ such that the $G$-invariant subsets of the space of countable structures are exactly the $\La_{ω_1ω}(Q)$-definable sets.
We prove a number of results motivated by global questions of uniformity in computability theory, and universality of countable Borel equivalence relations. Our main technical tool is a game for constructing functions on free products of countable groups. We begin by investigating the notion of uniform universality, first proposed by Montalbán, Reimann and Slaman. This notion is a strengthened form of a countable Borel equivalence relation being universal, which we conjecture is equivalent to the usual notion. With this additional uniformity hypothesis, we can answer many questions concerning …
We show that for any Polish group $G$ and any countable normal subgroup $Γ\triangleleft G$, the coset equivalence relation $G/Γ$ is a hyperfinite Borel equivalence relation. In particular, the outer automorphism group of any countable group is hyperfinite.
We show that if A is a linear order then Th(A) is either $\aleph_0$-categorical or Borel complete (in the sense of Friedman and Stanley). We generalize this; if A has countably many unary predicates attached, then Th(A) is $\aleph_0$-categorical, has finitely many countable models (at least three), is Borel equivalent to equality on the reals, is Borel equivalent to "countable sets of reals," or is Borel complete. Furthermore, each of these cases corresponds in a natural way to a count of models of all sizes, up to back-and-forth equivalence. All these cases are possible and we compute precise…
We show that the embeddability relations for countable quandles and for countable fields of any given characteristic other than 2 are maximally complex in a strong sense: they are invariantly universal. This notion from the theory of Borel reducibility states that any analytic quasi-order on a standard Borel space essentially appears as the restriction of the embeddability relation to an isomorphism-invariant Borel set. As an intermediate step we show that the embeddability relation of countable quandles is a complete analytic quasi-order.
We show that a Borel action of a standard Borel group which is isomorphic to a sum of a countable abelian group with a countable sum of real lines and circles induces an orbit equivalence relation which is hypersmooth, i.e., Borel reducible to eventual agreement on sequences of reals, and it follows from this result along with the structure theory for locally compact abelian groups that Borel actions of Polish LCA groups induce orbit equivalence relations which are essentially hyperfinite, extending a result of Gao and Jackson and answering a question of Ding and Gao.
We study the Borel complexity of sets of normal numbers in several numeration systems. Taking a dynamical point of view, we offer a unified treatment for continued fraction expansions and base $r$ expansions, and their various generalisations: generalised Lüroth series expansions and $β$-expansions. In fact, we consider subshifts over a countable alphabet generated by all possible expansions of numbers in $[0,1)$. Then normal numbers correspond to generic points of shift-invariant measures. It turns out that for these subshifts the set of generic points for a shift-invariant probability measur…
We show that every countable Borel equivalence relation structurable by $n$-dimensional contractible simplicial complexes embeds into one which is structurable by such complexes with the further property that each vertex belongs to at most $M_n := 2^{n-1}(n^2+3n+2)-2$ edges; this generalizes a result of Jackson-Kechris-Louveau in the case $n = 1$. The proof is based on that of a classical result of Whitehead on countable CW-complexes.
We develop general machinery to cast the class of potential canonical Scott sentences of an infinitary sentence $Φ$ as a class of structures in a related language. From this, we show that $Φ$ has a Borel complete expansion if and only if $S_\infty$ divides $Aut(M)$ for some countable model $M\models Φ$. Using this, we prove that for theories $T_h$ asserting that $\{E_n\}$ is a countable family of cross cutting equivalence relations with $h(n)$ classes, if $h(n)$ is uniformly bounded then $T_h$ is not Borel complete, providing a converse to Theorem~2.1 of \cite{LU}.
