Some variants of Vaught's conjecture from the perspective of algebraic logic

Abstract

Vaught’s Conjecture states that if T is a complete first order theory in a countable language such that T has uncountably many pairwise non-isomorphic countably infinite models, then T has 2^ℵ_0 many pairwise non-isomorphic countably infinite models. Continuing investigations initiated in S´agi, we apply methods of algebraic logic to study some variants of Vaught’s conjecture. More concretely, let S be a σ-compact monoid of selfmaps of the the natural numbers. We prove, among other things, that if a complete first order theory T has at least ℵ1 many countable models that cannot be elementarily embedded into each other by elements of S, then, in fact, T has continuum many such models. We also study-related questions in the context of equality free logics and obtain similar results. Our proofs are based on the representation theory of cylindric and quasi-polyadic algebras (for details see Henkin, Monk and Tarski (cylindric Algebras Part 1 and Part 2)) and topological properties of the Stone spaces of these algebras.