Maximality and collapse in the hierarchy of α-c.a. degrees

Abstract

In (A Hierarchy of Turing Degrees: A Transfinite Hierarchy of Lowness Notions in the Computably Enumerable Degrees, Unifying Classes, and Natural Definability (2020), Annals of Mathematics Studies, Princeton University Press), Downey and Greenberg define a transfinite hierarchy of low 2 c.e. degrees – the totally α-c.a. degrees, for appropriately small ordinals α. This new hierarchy is of particular interest because it has already given rise to several natural definability results, and provides a new definable antichain in the c.e. degrees. Several levels of this hierarchy contain maximal degrees. We discuss how maximality interacts with upper cones, and the related notion of hierarchy collapse in upper cones. For example, we show that there is a totally ω-c.a. degree above which there is no maximal totally ω-c.a. degree.