By Jockusch’s bounds, some computable colorings of pairs have no homogeneous set computable in , while some computable coloring of triples forces all its infinite homogeneous sets to compute . Seetapun (1995) showed that pairs behave differently: for every non-computable set , every computable coloring of pairs has an infinite homogeneous set that does not compute . In particular, Ramsey’s theorem for pairs does not imply . We follow the proof of Dzhafarov and Jockusch (2009), which goes through the decomposition of the previous lesson: cohesive sets can avoid cones, and the infinite pigeonhole principle avoids cones for arbitrary instances.
Throughout, a set is identified with its characteristic sequence, and a finite string with the finite set .
3.1 Mathias forcing
A Mathias condition is a pair with a string and an infinite set with . A string is compatible with if and every with and belongs to . A condition extends if is compatible with and . A set satisfies if every prefix of of length at least is compatible with it, that is, and .
The string is the part of already decided, and the reservoir contains the elements that may still be added. A condition extending is satisfied only by sets satisfying .
3.2 Cone avoidance for cohesiveness
Let be a set and . Every -computable sequence has a cohesive set with .
We build a sequence of Mathias conditions , with and all reservoirs -computable, and let , assuming the strings grow unboundedly. Then satisfies every condition. The steps of the construction handle, in a fixed order, three kinds of tasks.
Infinity. Given , let , and pass to , where extends by zeros up to position , and . The set then contains .
Cohesiveness for . One of and is infinite; pass to with that set, which is -computable. Then , so or .
The requirement . Given , consider the following cases.
- There are and a string compatible with with . Pass to . Every satisfying it has , by the use principle.
- There is such that diverges for every compatible with . Keep . Every satisfying it has : a convergent computation would converge with a prefix of , which is compatible.
- Otherwise, for every some compatible gives a convergent computation, and all such computations give . Then : given , search, with and the -computable set , for a compatible with , and output its value. This case is excluded by hypothesis.
The resulting set is infinite, cohesive, and satisfies for every .
The reservoirs must stay -computable for case 3 to give a reduction to . This is possible because the cohesiveness steps only intersect the reservoir with sets computable in .
3.3 Strong cone avoidance for the pigeonhole principle
The infinite pigeonhole principle for two colors asks, given a set , for an infinite subset of or of . When is computable, or itself is a computable solution. When is arbitrary, a solution may be forced to be complex: some infinite set has only infinite subsets computing a given set (see the exercises). The theorem of Dzhafarov and Jockusch says that the two sides cannot both be forced.
For every set and every , there is a Scott ideal containing and not containing .
Let , and with PA relative to and , by the cone avoidance basis theorem (Cone avoidance basis theorem) relativized to . The ideal is a Scott ideal by Proposition 2.3 of “Weak König's lemma”, as in Theorem 2.4 of “Weak König's lemma”, and does not contain .
Let be a set and . For every set , there is an infinite set with or , and .
Write and . Let be a Scott ideal containing and not (Lemma 3.3). If some infinite subset of or of belongs to , then , so , and we are done. Assume from now on:
(H) no infinite subset of or of belongs to .
We build two sets and simultaneously, with conditions : is infinite with , and the finite set is contained in , for . A condition extends if each extends as Mathias conditions. The sets are the unions of the strings along a sequence of conditions.
Infinity. Given a condition and , the set is infinite: otherwise minus finitely many elements would be an infinite subset of in , contradicting (H). Let , extend by zeros and then at position , and replace by .
The requirement : or . Fix a condition . For and , say that answers if for every partition , there are and a string compatible with (compatibility is defined as for Mathias conditions, even if is finite) with .
The set of partitions, coded as , for which this fails is a class: failure means that every compatible with , for both , gives no convergent computation with value , and each instance of this condition involves finitely many bits of . By compactness, answers if and only if this class is empty, a property of . Let be the set of pairs answered by ; it is c.e. in , which is a member of .
- If for some : apply the definition to the partition . There are and compatible with with . The new elements of lie in . Replacing by and by gives an extension forcing .
- If for some : the class of partitions witnessing it is non-empty, and since is a Scott ideal containing , it has a member , with . For some , is infinite; it belongs to . The condition extends , and every satisfying has , divergent or different: a convergent computation with value would come from a compatible string.
- Otherwise, every has some with , and only occurs. Then is computable in , by enumerating : so , a contradiction.
Conclusion. Build a sequence of conditions that handles infinity for both sides and every requirement in turn, and let , be the limits. Both are infinite, , and every requirement holds. If for some , then for every , so . Otherwise . Either or works.
The heart of the proof is the disjunctive question: instead of asking whether some extension inside forces a convergence, which is too complex since is arbitrary, one asks whether every partition of allows a convergence on one side. A positive answer applies in particular to ; a negative answer is witnessed by a partition in the Scott ideal, and the reservoir is shrunk to a side of this partition. The new reservoir is thus a solution, in , of the instance of the pigeonhole principle, and (H) ensures that it still meets both and infinitely often.
3.4 Seetapun’s theorem
Let be a set and . Every -computable coloring has an infinite homogeneous set with .
The sequence is -computable. By Theorem 3.2, it has a cohesive set with . Let enumerate in increasing order, and ; it is a stable coloring (Theorem 2.4), computable in . By Theorem 3.4 with in place of , applied to the limit set , there is an infinite set contained in or in its complement with . By Proposition 2.6 (2), computes an infinite homogeneous set for , and is homogeneous for , computable in . So .
There is an ω-model of not containing . Consequently does not imply over .
Build sets with . Fix an enumeration of all pairs in which each pair appears infinitely often. At stage , take the next pair with . If is a coloring of with two colors, it is -computable, and Theorem 3.5 gives an infinite homogeneous set with ; let . Otherwise .
The class is a Turing ideal not containing . Every coloring in is for some , and is handled at some stage, so it has a homogeneous set in . By absoluteness, satisfies , and it is not a jump ideal.
Together with Corollary 1.10, Seetapun’s theorem shows that escapes the Big Five: it lies strictly below and is not provable in . Liu (2012) proved that it does not imply either, by showing that the infinite pigeonhole principle avoids PA degrees in the sense of Theorem 3.4; this is admitted here. Ramsey’s theorem for pairs is the first and most studied of a large family of combinatorial principles, the reverse mathematics zoo, many of which lie strictly below without being equivalent to any of the Big Five.
3.5 Exercises
Show that there is an infinite set all of whose infinite subsets compute a given set , and explain why this does not contradict Theorem 3.4.
Solution
Let , the set of codes of the prefixes of , with a coding in which longer strings have larger codes. An infinite subset of contains codes of arbitrarily long prefixes of , so it computes : to find , search for an element coding a string of length larger than . If is not computable, Theorem 3.4 with gives an infinite subset of or of that does not compute ; it cannot be a subset of , so it is a subset of . There is no contradiction: the theorem only guarantees a solution on one of the two sides, without saying which.
Show that there is an ω-model of not containing .
Solution
Combine the constructions of Lemma 3.3 and Corollary 3.6: at even stages, add a set PA relative to with , by the relativized cone avoidance basis theorem; at odd stages, handle the next coloring with Theorem 3.5. The resulting Turing ideal is a Scott ideal, satisfies , and does not contain .
3.6 Notes and references
Seetapun’s theorem appeared in Seetapun and Slaman (1995); the original proof is a direct forcing argument. The proof given here is due to Dzhafarov and Jockusch (2009), with the cohesiveness step of Cholak, Jockusch and Slaman (2001). Liu’s theorem appeared in 2012. The surveys of Hirschfeldt and of Dzhafarov and Mummert describe the reverse mathematics zoo.
- D. Seetapun and T. A. Slaman, On the strength of Ramsey’s theorem, Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 36 (1995), 570–582.
- D. D. Dzhafarov and C. G. Jockusch, Jr., Ramsey’s theorem and cone avoidance, Journal of Symbolic Logic 74 (2009), 557–578.
- L. Liu, RT²₂ does not imply WKL₀, Journal of Symbolic Logic 77 (2012), 609–620.
- D. R. Hirschfeldt, Slicing the Truth, World Scientific, 2014.