CUNY Set Theory Seminar, New York, September 2019

Abstract: This is joint work with John Clemens. We will begin this talk by discussing the problem of classifying the countable scattered linear orders. Here a linear order is called scattered if the rational order doesn’t embed into it. The class of such orders admits a ranking function valued in the ordinals; we will study the corresponding classification problem for each fixed rank. We will show that each increase in rank results in a “jump” in the complexity of the classification problem. In the second part of the talk we will define a family of jump operators on equivalence relations, each associated with a fixed countable group. The jump in the case of scattered linear orders is that associated with the group Z of integers. We will discuss the basic theory of these jump operators. Finally, we will discuss the question of when such a jump operator is proper, in the sense that the jump of E is strictly above E in the Borel reducibility order.