An Irrational Construction of R from Z

This paper reports on a construction of the real numbers in the ProofPower implementation of the HOL logic. Since the original construction was implemented, some major improvements to the ideas have been discovered. The improvements involve some entertaining mathematics: it turns out that the Dedekind cuts provide many routes one can travel to get from the ring of integers, Z, to the field of real numbers, R. The traditional stop-over on the way is the field of rational numbers, Q. This paper shows that going via certain rings of algebraic numbers can provide a pleasant alternative to the more well-trodden track.