Logic Colloquium 2024

Contributed Talk

Phase Transition Thresholds for Generalized Goodstein Sequences, Hydra Games and Ackermannian Functions.

Gabriele Buriola

  Wednesday, 14:50, J431 ! Live

Authors: Gabriele Buriola and Andreas Weiermann

We extend previous results [2] regarding the phase transition thresholds for Goodstein Sequences and Hydra Games to a more general setting. In both cases, we substitute the original successor function with the iterations of a strictly increasing primitive recursive function \(g\) satisfying the condition \(g(x) \geq x+1\); more precisely, the steps of the Hydra Game, originally of type \(\alpha_{f\!,i+1}= \alpha_{f\!,i}[1+f(i)]\), are now of the form \(\alpha^{f\!,g}_{i+1}=\alpha^{f\!,g}_{i}[1+f(g^{i-1}(1))]\), while the steps of Goodstein sequences are changed from \(m_{f\!,i+1}=m_{f\!,i}\left(1+f(i) \mapsto 1+f(i+1)\right) -1\) to \(m^{f\!,g}_{i+1}=m^{f\!,g}_i\left(1+f(g^{i-1}(1)) \mapsto 1+f(g^{i}(1))\right) -1\). The new phase transition thresholds incorporate the starting function \(g\). These findings also allow a generalization of the phase transition threshold for Ackermannian functions [1] and fit within a rich literature regarding phase transitions in provability [3,4,5].

Bibliography

  1. E. Omri, A. Weiermann,Classifying the phase transition threshold for Ackermannian functions,Journal of Pure and Applied Logic,Vol. 158, (2009), pp. 156–162.
  2. F. Meskens, A. Weiermann,Classifying phase transition thresholds for Goodstein sequences and Hydra games,Gentzen’s Centenary,Springer International Publishing, Cham, (2015), pp. 455–478.
  3. L. Carlucci, G. Lee, A. Weiermann,Sharp thresholds for hypergraph regressive Ramsey numbers,Journal of combinatorial theory. Series A,Vol. 118(2), (2011), pp. 558–585.
  4. M. De Smet, A. Weiermann,Sharp Thresholds for a Phase Transition Related to Weakly Increasing Sequences,Journal of logic and computation,Vol. 22(2), (2012), pp. 207–211.
  5. L. Gordeev, A. Weiermann,Phase transitions in Proof Theory,Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science,(Proceedings), (2010), pp. 343–358.

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