One of the recurrent themes in the area of the recursively enumerable (r.e.) degrees has been the study of the meet operator. While, trivially, the partial ordering of the r.e. degrees is an upper semi-lattice, i.e., the join ∗Lempp was partially supported by NSF grant DMS-0140120 and a Mercator Guest Professorship of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. †Slaman was partially supported by the A...

It is shown that for any computably enumerable (c.e.) degree w, if w 6= 0, then there is a c.e. degree a such that (a ∨w)′ = a′′ = 0′′ (so a is low2 and a ∨w is high). It follows from this and previous work of P. Cholak, M. Groszek and T. Slaman that the low and low2 c.e. degrees are not elementarily equivalent as partial orderings.

Sacks [14] showed that every computably enumerable (c.e.) degree > 0 has a c.e. splitting. Hence, relativising, every c.e. degree has a Δ2 splitting above each proper predecessor (by ‘splitting’ we understand ‘nontrivial splitting’). Arslanov [1] showed that 0′ has a d.c.e. splitting above each c.e. a < 0′. On the other hand, Lachlan [9] proved the existence of a c.e. a > 0 which has no c.e. sp...

The biinterpretability conjecture for the r.e. degrees asks whether, for each sufficiently large k, the Σk relations on the r.e. degrees are uniformly definable from parameters. We solve a weaker version: for each k ≥ 7, the Σk relations bounded from below by a nonzero degree are uniformly definable. As applications, we show that Low1 is parameter definable, and we provide a new example of a ∅–...

We prove two antibasis theorems for Π1 classes. The first is a jump inversion theorem for Π1 classes with respect to the global structure of the Turing degrees. For any P ⊆ 2, define S(P ), the degree spectrum of P , to be the set of all Turing degrees a such that there exists A ∈ P of degree a. For any degree a ≥ 0, let Jump(a) = {b : b = a}. We prove that, for any a ≥ 0 and any Π1 class P , i...

We investigate the connections between the complexity of a c.e. set, as calibrated by its strength as an oracle for Turing computations of functions in the Ershov hierarchy, and how strong reducibilities allows us to compute such sets. For example, we prove that a c.e. degree is totally ω-c.e. iff every set in it is weak truth-table reducible to a hypersimple, or ranked, set. We also show that ...

We study here the degree-theoretic structure of set-theoretical splittings of recursively enumerable (r.e.) sets into differences of r.e. sets. As a corollary we deduce that the ordering of wtt–degrees of unsolvability of differences of r.e. sets is not a distributive semilattice and is not elementarily equivalent to the ordering of r.e. wtt–degrees of unsolvability.

Sacks [14] showed that every computably enumerable (c.e.) degree ≥ 0 has a c.e. splitting. Hence, relativising, every c.e. degree has a Δ2 splitting above each proper predecessor (by ‘splitting’ we understand ‘nontrivial splitting’). Arslanov [1] showed that 0′ has a d.c.e. splitting above each c.e. a < 0′. On the other hand, Lachlan [9] proved the existence of a c.e. a > 0 which has no c.e. sp...

We show the undecidability of the Π3-theory of the partial order of computably enumerable Turing degrees.

Slaman and Woodin have developed and used set-theoretic methods to prove some remarkable theorems about automorphisms of, and de…nability in, the Turing degrees. Their methods apply to other coarser degree structures as well and, as they point out, give even stronger results for some of them. In particular, their methods can be used to show that the hyperarithmetic degrees are rigid and biinter...