Stable amalgamation over a predicate and the Gaifman property

TL;DR

This paper investigates the Gaifman property in first-order theories with a unary predicate, proving that stability over the predicate guarantees the Gaifman property and higher stable amalgamation, advancing understanding of model structure.

Contribution

It proves that stability over a predicate implies the Gaifman property and stronger amalgamation properties, confirming part of a generalized conjecture in model theory.

Findings

Stability over P implies the Gaifman property.

Higher stable amalgamation properties follow from stability.

The paper confirms the first part of a generalized Gaifman conjecture.

Abstract

We consider the following property of a first order theory T with a distinguished unary predicate P: every model of the theory of P occurs as the P-part of some model of T. We call this property the Gaifman property. Gaifman conjectured that if T is relatively categorical over P, then it has the Gaifman property. We propose a generalized version of this conjecture: if T fails the Gaifman property, then it exhibits non-structure over P, i.e., has many non-isomorphic models over P in many cardinalities. We address this conjecture for countable theories. Motivated by ideas from Classification Theory, we separate this conjecture into two parts: 1) stability over P (a structure property of theories) implies the Gaifman property, and 2) instability over P implies non-structure. In this paper prove the first part of this conjecture. In fact, we prove a stronger statement: an appropriate version of stability implies higher stable amalgamation properties.