Fermat's last theorem and Catalan's conjecture in weak exponential arithmetics

Abstract

AbstractWe study Fermat's last theorem and Catalan's conjecture in the context of weak arithmetics with exponentiation. We deal with expansions of models of arithmetical theories (in the language ) by a binary (partial or total) function e intended as an exponential. We provide a general construction of such expansions and prove that it is universal for the class of all exponentials e which satisfy a certain natural set of axioms . We construct a model and a substructure with e total and (Presburger arithmetic) such that in both and Fermat's last theorem for e is violated by cofinally many exponents n and (in all coordinates) cofinally many pairwise linearly independent triples . On the other hand, under the assumption of ABC conjecture (in the standard model), we show that Catalan's conjecture for e is provable in (even in a weaker theory) and thus holds in and . Finally, we also show that Fermat's last theorem for e is provable (again, under the assumption of ABC in ) in “coprimality for e”.