Truncations of ordered abelian groups

Abstract

We give axioms for a class of ordered structures, called truncated ordered abelian groups (TOAG’s) carrying an addition. TOAG’s come naturally from ordered abelian groups with a 0 and a +, but the addition of a TOAG is not necessarily even a cancellative semigroup. The main examples are initial segments [0, tau ] of an ordered abelian group, with a truncation of the addition. We prove that any model of these axioms (i.e. a truncated ordered abelian group) is an initial segment of an ordered abelian group. We define Presburger TOAG’s, and give a criterion for a TOAG to be a Presburger TOAG, and for two Presburger TOAG’s to be elementarily equivalent, proving analogues of classical results on Presburger arithmetic. Their main interest for us comes from the model theory of certain local rings which are quotients of valuation rings valued in a truncation [0, a] of the ordered group {mathbb {Z}} or more general ordered abelian groups, via a study of these truncations without reference to the ambient ordered abelian group. The results are used essentially in a forthcoming paper (D’Aquino and Macintyre, The model theory of residue rings of models of Peano Arithmetic: The prime power case, 2021, arXiv:2102.00295) in the solution of a problem of Zilber about the logical complexity of quotient rings, by principal ideals, of nonstandard models of Peano arithmetic.