Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2015 / iii / Paper 25 / 2

An immune set is an infinite set containing no infinite computably enumerable subset. For binary strings, use an effective bijection with natural numbers when discussing enumeration. Fix an optimal description machine $U$ and define the plain Kolmogorov complexityAn incompressible string has no description shorter than itself, that is, $C_U(\sigma )\ge |\sigma |$. The choice of machine is fixed throughout the proof.

Let $I$ be the set of incompressible strings. There are $2^n$ strings of length $n$, but only $1+2+\cdots +2^{n-1}=2^n-1$ programs of length less than $n$. Each halting program describes at most one string, so at least one string of each length belongs to $I$. Consequently $I$ is infinite.

Suppose an infinite computably enumerable set $E$ were contained in $I$. Define a total computable function $q(n)$ by running an enumeration of $E$ until a string of length at least $n$ appears, and outputting the first such string. This search always terminates because there are only finitely many binary strings of bounded length. A fixed program can reconstruct $q(n)$ from a self-delimiting binary code of $n$. For example, if the binary expansion of $n$ has length $\ell$, encode it using $\ell$ copies of one, a zero separator, and its $\ell$ binary digits. This givesfor a constant $c$ depending on the enumeration algorithm and the optimal description machine, not on $n$. For sufficiently large $n$ this is less than $n\le |q(n)|$, contradicting $q(n)\in I$. Thus the set of incompressible strings is an immune set. This proves immunity of incompressible strings. The argument uses the ability to describe a selected long string by the short threshold specifying how it was selected.

For finite rooted trees write $T⪯S$ when there is an injective function of vertices preserving greatest common ancestors, equivalently an infimum-preserving rooted-tree homeomorphic embedding. No linear ordering of siblings is imposed. Kruskal's tree theorem says that every infinite sequence has an earlier tree embedding into a later tree: this embedding relation is a well-quasi-ordering.

The finite form uses a parameter $k$ to restrict the growth of the trees. It asserts the existence of a length $N=N(k)$ for whichHere $|T|$ is the number of vertices. The parameter $k$ is universally quantified; changing the starting index just shifts the parameter. This is Friedman's finite form of Kruskal's theorem.

Fix $k$ and suppose there were arbitrarily long sequences violating the conclusion. Form a tree whose nodes are their finite prefixes, including the empty prefix. Choose one representative of each finite rooted-tree isomorphism type. At position $i$ there are only finitely many choices, since the tree has at most $k+i$ vertices. Hence this finite bad-sequence tree is finitely branching. It has nodes at arbitrarily large heights by the supposed failure of the finite form. König infinity lemma supplies an infinite branch. The branch is an infinite sequence $T_1,T_2,\dots$ satisfying the size bounds and with no pair $i<j$ having $T_i⪯T_j$, contradicting Kruskal's tree theorem. Therefore the finite length exists for every $k$.

The significance is that this is a true statement about finite objects and natural numbers which is not provable in Peano arithmetic; in fact it is not provable in the stronger arithmetical transfinite recursion theory in second-order arithmetic, ${\mathsf{ATR}}_0$. It is a natural combinatorial instance of incompleteness. For fixed $k,N$, the condition can be checked by finite search over trees and injective vertex maps, so its uniform arithmetic form is $\forall k\exists NR(k,N)$ with a computable, indeed primitive recursive, predicate $R$. Thus its least sufficient length is a total computable function, but its totality cannot be proved in those theories. Each fixed numerical instance can nevertheless be proved in Peano arithmetic by verifying some particular finite witness. The obstruction concerns the uniform statement for all parameters, rather than the decidability of any one finite search.