Modulo computably enumerable degrees by cupping partners

Abstract

Cupping partners of an element in an upper semilattice with a greatest element 1 are those joining the element to 1. We define a congruence relation on such an upper semilattice by considering the elements having the same cupping partners as equivalent. It is interesting that this congruence relation induces a non-dense quotient structure of computably enumerable Turing degrees. Another main interesting phenomenon in this article is that on the computably enumerable degrees, this relation is different from that modulo the noncuppable ideal, though they define a same equivalent class for the computable Turing degree.