Torsion-free abelian groups with optimal Scott families

Abstract

We prove that for any computable successor ordinal of the form [Formula: see text] [Formula: see text] limit and [Formula: see text] there exists computable torsion-free abelian group [Formula: see text]TFAG[Formula: see text] that is relatively [Formula: see text] -categorical and not [Formula: see text] -categorical. Equivalently, for any such [Formula: see text] there exists a computable TFAG whose initial segments are uniformly described by [Formula: see text] infinitary computable formulae up to automorphism (i.e. it has a c.e. uniformly [Formula: see text]-Scott family), and there is no syntactically simpler (c.e.) family of formulae that would capture these orbits. As far as we know, the problem of finding such optimal examples of (relatively) [Formula: see text]-categorical TFAGs for arbitrarily large [Formula: see text] was first raised by Goncharov at least 10 years ago, but it has resisted solution (see e.g. Problem 7.1 in survey [Computable abelian groups, Bull. Symbolic Logic 20(3) (2014) 315–356]). As a byproduct of the proof, we introduce an effective functor that transforms a [Formula: see text]-computable worthy labeled tree (to be defined) into a computable TFAG. We expect that this technical result will find further applications not necessarily related to categoricity questions.