External definability and groups in NIP theories

We prove that many properties and invariants of definable groups in NIP theories, such as definable amenability, G/G^{00}, etc., are preserved when passing to the theory of the Shelah expansion by externally definable sets, M^{ext}, of a model M. In the light of these results we continue the study of the "definable topological dynamics" of groups in NIP theories. In particular we prove the Ellis group conjecture relating the Ellis group to G/G^{00} in some new cases, including definably amenable groups in o-minimal structures.Comment: 28 pages. Introduction was expanded and some minor mistakes were corrected. Journal of the London Mathematical Society, accepte

Definability of groups in ℵ0\aleph_0-stable metric structures

We prove that in a continuous $\aleph_0$-stable theory every type-definable group is definable. The two main ingredients in the proof are: \begin{enumerate} \item Results concerning Morley ranks (i.e., Cantor-Bendixson ranks) from \cite{BenYaacov:TopometricSpacesAndPerturbations}, allowing us to prove the theorem in case the metric is invariant under the group action; and \item Results concerning the existence of translation-invariant definable metrics on type-definable groups and the extension of partial definable metrics to total ones. \end{enumerate

What Do Symmetries Tell Us About Structure?

Mathematicians, physicists, and philosophers of physics often look to the symmetries of an object for insight into the structure and constitution of the object. My aim in this paper is to explain why this practice is successful. In order to do so, I present a collection of results that are closely related to (and in a sense, generalizations of) Beth’s and Svenonius’ theorems

Elementary classes of finite VC-dimension

Let U be a monster model and let D be a subset of U. Let (U,D) denote theexpansion of U with a new predicate for D. Write e(D) for the collection of all subsets C of U such that (U,C) is elementary equivalent to (U,D). We prove that if e(D) has finite VC-dimension then D is externally definable (i.e. it is the trace on U of a set definable in an elementary superstructure of U).Comment: Small correction

Order Invariance on Decomposable Structures

Order-invariant formulas access an ordering on a structure's universe, but the model relation is independent of the used ordering. Order invariance is frequently used for logic-based approaches in computer science. Order-invariant formulas capture unordered problems of complexity classes and they model the independence of the answer to a database query from low-level aspects of databases. We study the expressive power of order-invariant monadic second-order (MSO) and first-order (FO) logic on restricted classes of structures that admit certain forms of tree decompositions (not necessarily of bounded width). While order-invariant MSO is more expressive than MSO and, even, CMSO (MSO with modulo-counting predicates), we show that order-invariant MSO and CMSO are equally expressive on graphs of bounded tree width and on planar graphs. This extends an earlier result for trees due to Courcelle. Moreover, we show that all properties definable in order-invariant FO are also definable in MSO on these classes. These results are applications of a theorem that shows how to lift up definability results for order-invariant logics from the bags of a graph's tree decomposition to the graph itself.Comment: Accepted for LICS 201