A limit on relative genericity in the recursively enumerable sets

Abstract

AbstractWork in the setting of the recursively enumerable sets and their Turing degrees. A set X is low if X′, its Turing jump, is recursive in ∅′ and high if X′ computes ∅″. Attempting to find a property between being low and being recursive, Bickford and Mills produced the following definition. W is deep, if for each recursively enumerable set A, the jump of A ⊕ W is recursive in the jump of A. We prove that there are no deep degrees other than the recursive one.Given a set W, we enumerate a set A and approximate its jump. The construction of A is governed by strategies, indexed by the Turing functionals Φ. Simplifying the situation, a typical strategy converts a failure to recursively compute W into a constraint on the enumeration of A, so that (W ⊕ A)′ is forced to disagree with Φ(−;A′). The conversion has some ambiguity; in particular, A cannot be found uniformly from W.We also show that there is a “moderately” deep degree: There is a low nonzero degree whose join with any other low degree is not high.