Cardinal characteristics and countable Borel equivalence relations

Boykin and Jackson recently introduced a property of countable Borel equivalence relations called Borel boundedness, which they showed is closely related to the union problem for hyperfinite equivalence relations. In this paper, we introduce a family of properties of countable Borel equivalence relations which correspond to combinatorial cardinal characteristics of the continuum in the same way that Borel boundedness corresponds to the bounding number $\mathfrak b$. We analyze some of the basic behavior of these properties, showing for instance that the property corresponding to the splitting number $\mathfrak s$ coincides with smoothness. We then settle many of the implication relationships between the properties; these relationships turn out to be closely related to (but not the same as) the Borel Tukey ordering on cardinal characteristics

Applications of tree decompositions and accessibility to treeability of Borel graphs

A framework to handle tree decompositions of the components of a Borel graph in a Borel fashion is introduced, along the lines of Tserunyan's Stallings Theorem for equivalence relations arXiv:1805.09506. This setting leads to a notion of accessibility for Borel graphs, together with a treeability criterion. This criterion is applied to show that, in particular, Borel equivalence relations associated to Borel graphs with accessible planar connected components are measure treeable, generalising results of Conley, Gaboriau, Marks, and Tucker-Drob arXiv:2104.07431 and Timar arXiv:1910.01307. It is also proven that uniformly locally finite Borel graphs with components of finite tree-width yield Borel treeable equivalence relations. Our results imply that p.m.p countable Borel equivalence relations with measured property (T) do not admit locally finite graphings with planar components a.s.Comment: 39 page

Borel asymptotic dimension and hyperfinite equivalence relations

A long standing open problem in the theory of hyperfinite equivalence relations asks if the orbit equivalence relation generated by a Borel action of a countable amenable group is hyperfinite. In this paper we prove that this question always has a positive answer when the acting group is polycyclic, and we obtain a positive answer for all free actions of a large class of solvable groups including the Baumslag--Solitar group BS(1,2) and the lamplighter group. This marks the first time that a group of exponential volume-growth has been verified to have this property. In obtaining this result we introduce a new tool for studying Borel equivalence relations by extending Gromov's notion of asymptotic dimension to the Borel setting. We show that countable Borel equivalence relations of finite Borel asymptotic dimension are hyperfinite, and more generally we prove under a mild compatibility assumption that increasing unions of such equivalence relations are hyperfinite. As part of our main theorem, we prove for a large class of solvable groups that all of their free Borel actions have finite Borel asymptotic dimension (and finite dynamic asymptotic dimension in the case of a continuous action on a zero-dimensional space). We also provide applications to Borel chromatic numbers, Borel and continuous Folner tilings, topological dynamics, and $C^*$-algebras

Definability and Classification of Equivalence Relations and Logical Theories

This thesis consists of four independent papers. In the first paper, joint with Kechris, we study the global aspects of structurability in the theory of countable Borel equivalence relations. For a class K of countable relational structures, a countable Borel equivalence relation E is said to be K-structurable if there is a Borel way to put a structure in K on each E-equivalence class. We show that K-structurability interacts well with various preorders commonly used in the classification of countable Borel equivalence relations. We consider the poset of classes of K-structurable equivalence relations for various K, under inclusion, and show that it is a distributive lattice. Finally, we consider the effect on K-structurability of various model-theoretic properties of K; in particular, we characterize the K such that every K-structurable equivalence relation is smooth. In the second paper, we consider the classes of Kn-structurable equivalence relations, where Kn is the class of n-dimensional contractible simplicial complexes. We show that every Kn-structurable equivalence relation Borel embeds into one structurable by complexes in Kn with the further property that each vertex belongs to at most Mn := 2n-1(n2+3n+2)-2 edges; this generalizes a result of Jackson-Kechris-Louveau in the case n=1. In the third paper, we consider the amalgamation property from model theory in an abstract categorical context. A category is said to have the amalgamation property if every pushout diagram has a cocone. We characterize the finitely generated categories I such that in every category with the amalgamation property, every I-shaped diagram has a cocone. In the fourth paper, we prove a strong conceptual completeness theorem (in the sense of Makkai) for the infinitary logic L&#x03C9;1&#x03C9;: every countable L&#x03C9;1&#x03C9;-theory can be canonically recovered from its standard Borel groupoid of countable models, up to a suitable syntactical notion of equivalence. This implies that given two theories (L,T) and (L',T'), every Borel functor Mod(L',T') &#x2192; Mod(L,T) between the respective groupoids of countable models is Borel naturally isomorphic to the functor induced by some L'&#x03C9;1&#x03C9;-interpretation of T in T', which generalizes a recent result of Harrison-Trainor, Miller, and Montalban in the case where T, T' are &#x2135;0-categorical.</p

Essential countability of treeable equivalence relations

We establish a dichotomy theorem characterizing the circumstances under which a treeable Borel equivalence relation E is essentially countable. Under additional topological assumptions on the treeing, we in fact show that E is essentially countable if and only if there is no continuous embedding of E1 into E. Our techniques also yield the first classical proof of the analogous result for hypersmooth equivalence relations, and allow us to show that up to continuous Kakutani embeddability, there is a minimum Borel function which is not essentially countable-to-one

Uniformity, Universality, and Computability Theory

We prove a number of results motivated by global questions of uniformity in computability theory, and universality of countable Borel equivalence relations. Our main technical tool is a game for constructing functions on free products of countable groups. We begin by investigating the notion of uniform universality, first proposed by Montalb\'an, Reimann and Slaman. This notion is a strengthened form of a countable Borel equivalence relation being universal, which we conjecture is equivalent to the usual notion. With this additional uniformity hypothesis, we can answer many questions concerning how countable groups, probability measures, the subset relation, and increasing unions interact with universality. For many natural classes of countable Borel equivalence relations, we can also classify exactly which are uniformly universal. We also show the existence of refinements of Martin's ultrafilter on Turing invariant Borel sets to the invariant Borel sets of equivalence relations that are much finer than Turing equivalence. For example, we construct such an ultrafilter for the orbit equivalence relation of the shift action of the free group on countably many generators. These ultrafilters imply a number of structural properties for these equivalence relations.Comment: 61 Page