Automorphism groups of models of Peano arithmetic

Abstract

Which groups are isomorphic to automorphism groups of models of Peano Arithmetic? It will be shown here that any group that has half a chance of being isomorphic to the automorphism group of some model of Peano Arithmetic actually is.For any structure , let Aut() be its automorphism group. There are groups which are not isomorphic to any model = (N, +, ·, 0, 1, ≤) of PA. For example, it is clear that Aut(N), being a subgroup of Aut((, <)), must be torsion-free. However, as will be proved in this paper, if (A, <) is a linearly ordered set and G is a subgroup of Aut((A, <)), then there are models of PA such that Aut() ≅ G.If is a structure, then its automorphism group can be considered as a topological group by letting the stabilizers of finite subsets of A be the basic open subgroups. If ′ is an expansion of , then Aut(′) is a closed subgroup of Aut(). Conversely, for any closed subgroup G ≤ Aut() there is an expansion ′ of such that Aut(′) = G. Thus, if is a model of PA, then Aut() is not only a subgroup of Aut((N, <)), but it is even a closed subgroup of Aut((N, ′)).There is a characterization, due to Cohn [2] and to Conrad [3], of those groups G which are isomorphic to closed subgroups of automorphism groups of linearly ordered sets.