Complementation in the Turing degrees

Abstract

AbstractPosner [6] has shown, by a nonuniform proof, that every degree has a complement below 0′. We show that a 1-generic complement for each set of degree between 0 and 0′ can be found uniformly. Moreover, the methods just as easily can be used to produce a complement whose jump has the degree of any real recursively enumerable in and above ∅′. In the second half of the paper, we show that the complementation of the degrees below 0′ does not extend to all recursively enumerable degrees. Namely, there is a pair of recursively enumerable degrees a above b such that no degree strictly below a joins b above a. (This result is independently due to S. B. Cooper.) We end with some open problems.