Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-wq2xx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T23:58:39.063Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Hereditary undecidability of some theories of finite structures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2014

Ross Willard*
Affiliation:
Department of Pure Mathematics, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1, Canada, E-mail: rdwillar@flynn.uwaterloo.ca

Abstract

Using a result of Gurevich and Lewis on the word problem for finite semigroups, we give short proofs that the following theories are hereditarily undecidable: (1) finite graphs of vertex-degree at most 3; (2) finite nonvoid sets with two distinguished permutations; (3) finite-dimensional vector spaces over a finite field with two distinguished endomorphisms.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Symbolic Logic 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

[1]Baur, W., Undecidability of the theory of abelian groups with a subgroup, Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society, vol. 55 (1976), pp. 125128.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[2]Burris, S. and McKenzie, R., Decidability and Boolean representations, Memoirs of the American Mathematical Society, American Mathematical Society, Providence, Rhode Island, 1981.Google Scholar
[3]Burris, S., McKenzie, R., and Valeriote, M., Decidable discriminator varieties from unary varieties, this Journal, vol. 56 (1991), pp. 13551368.Google Scholar
[4]Burris, S. and Sankappanavar, H. P., A course in universal algebra, Springer-Verlag, New York, 1981.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[5]Garfunkel, S. and Shank, H., On the undecidahility of finite planar cubic graphs, this Journal, vol. 37 (1972), pp. 595597.Google Scholar
[6]Gurevich, Yu. and Lewis, H. R., The word problem for cancellation semigroups with zero, this Journal, vol. 49 (1984), pp. 184191.Google Scholar
[7]Idziak, P., Varieties with decidable finite algebras I: linearity, Algebra Universalis, vol. 26 (1989), pp. 234246.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[8]Idziak, P., Varieties with decidable finite algebras II: permutability, Algebra Universalis, vol. 26 (1989), pp. 247256.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[9]Jeong, J., Finitary decidability implies congruence permutability for congruence modular varieties, Algebra Universalis, vol. 29 (1992), pp. 441448.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[10]Jeong, J., Finitely decidable congruence modular varieties, Transactions of the American Mathematical Society, vol. 339 (1993), pp. 623642.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[11]Lavrov, I. A., Effective inseparability of the sets of identically true formulae and finitely refutable formulae for certain elementary theories, Algebra i Logika, vol. 2 (1963), pp. 518. (Russian)Google Scholar
[12]McKenzie, R. and Valeriote, M., The structure of decidable locally finite varieties, Birkhäuser, Boston, 1989.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[13]Prest, M., Model theory and modules, London Mathematical Society Lecture Note Series, vol. 130, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988.Google Scholar
[14]Prest, M., Wild representation type and undecidability, Communications in Algebra, vol. 19 (1991), pp. 919929.Google Scholar
[15]Rabin, M. O., A simple method for undecidability proofs and some applications, Logic, methodology and philosophy of science (Bar-Hillel, Y., editor), North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1965.Google Scholar
[16]Rogers, H., Certain logical reduction and decision problems, Annals of Mathematics, vol. 64 (1956), pp. 264284.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[17]Slobodskoi, A. M., Unsolvability of the universal theory of finite groups, Algebra and Logic, vol. 20 (1981), pp. 139156.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[18]Slomson, A. B., review of [5], Mathematical Reviews, vol. 47 #4781.Google Scholar
[19]Valeriote, M. and Willard, R., Some properties of finitely decidable varieties, International Journal of Algebra and Computation, vol. 2 (1992), pp. 89101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[20]Willard, R., Decidable discriminator varieties from unary classes, Transactions of the American Mathematical Society, vol. 336 (1993), pp. 311333.CrossRefGoogle Scholar