Rigidity is undecidable

We show that the problem `whether a finite set of regular-linear axioms defines a rigid theory' is undecidable.Comment: 8 page

Isomorphisms of scattered automatic linear orders

We prove that the isomorphism of scattered tree automatic linear orders as well as the existence of automorphisms of scattered word automatic linear orders are undecidable. For the existence of automatic automorphisms of word automatic linear orders, we determine the exact level of undecidability in the arithmetical hierarchy

Undecidability of the Spectral Gap (full version)

We show that the spectral gap problem is undecidable. Specifically, we construct families of translationally-invariant, nearest-neighbour Hamiltonians on a 2D square lattice of d-level quantum systems (d constant), for which determining whether the system is gapped or gapless is an undecidable problem. This is true even with the promise that each Hamiltonian is either gapped or gapless in the strongest sense: it is promised to either have continuous spectrum above the ground state in the thermodynamic limit, or its spectral gap is lower-bounded by a constant in the thermodynamic limit. Moreover, this constant can be taken equal to the local interaction strength of the Hamiltonian.Comment: v1: 146 pages, 56 theorems etc., 15 figures. See shorter companion paper arXiv:1502.04135 (same title and authors) for a short version omitting technical details. v2: Small but important fix to wording of abstract. v3: Simplified and shortened some parts of the proof; minor fixes to other parts. Now only 127 pages, 55 theorems etc., 10 figures. v4: Minor updates to introductio

Enumeration Reducibility in Closure Spaces with Applications to Logic and Algebra

In many instances in first order logic or computable algebra, classical theorems show that many problems are undecidable for general structures, but become decidable if some rigidity is imposed on the structure. For example, the set of theorems in many finitely axiomatisable theories is nonrecursive, but the set of theorems for any finitely axiomatisable complete theory is recursive. Finitely presented groups might have an nonrecursive word problem, but finitely presented simple groups have a recursive word problem. In this article we introduce a topological framework based on closure spaces to show that many of these proofs can be obtained in a similar setting. We will show in particular that these statements can be generalized to cover arbitrary structures, with no finite or recursive presentation/axiomatization. This generalizes in particular work by Kuznetsov and others. Examples from first order logic and symbolic dynamics will be discussed at length

Decision problems for 3-manifolds and their fundamental groups

We survey the status of some decision problems for 3-manifolds and their fundamental groups. This includes the classical decision problems for finitely presented groups (Word Problem, Conjugacy Problem, Isomorphism Problem), and also the Homeomorphism Problem for 3-manifolds and the Membership Problem for 3-manifold groups.Comment: 31 pages, final versio

Reconstructing a point set from a random subset of its pairwise distances

Let $V$ be a set of $n$ points on the real line. Suppose that each pairwise distance is known independently with probability $p$. How much of $V$ can be reconstructed up to isometry? We prove that $p = (\log n)/n$ is a sharp threshold for reconstructing all of $V$ which improves a result of Benjamini and Tzalik. This follows from a hitting time result for the random process where the pairwise distances are revealed one-by-one uniformly at random. We also show that $1/n$ is a weak threshold for reconstructing a linear proportion of $V$.Comment: 13 page