Bøger i Siberian School of Algebra and Logic serien

For more than 30 years, the author has studied the model-theoretic aspects of the theory of valued fields and multi-valued fields. Many of the key results included in this book were obtained by the author whilst preparing the manuscript. Thus the unique overview of the theory, as developed in the book, has been previously unavailable. The book deals with the theory of valued fields and mutli-valued fields. The theory of Prufer rings is discussed from the `geometric' point of view. The author shows that by introducing the Zariski topology on families of valuation rings, it is possible to distinguish two important subfamilies of Prufer rings that correspond to Boolean and near Boolean families of valuation rings. Also, algebraic and model-theoretic properties of multi-valued fields with near Boolean families of valuation rings satisfying the local-global principle are studied. It is important that this principle is elementary, i.e., it can be expressed in the language of predicate calculus. The most important results obtained in the book include a criterion for the elementarity of an embedding of a multi-valued field and a criterion for the elementary equivalence for multi-valued fields from the class defined by the additional natural elementary conditions (absolute unramification, maximality and almost continuity of local elementary properties). The book concludes with a brief chapter discussing the bibliographic references available on the material presented, and a short history of the major developments within the field.

This is the only monograph devoted to the expressibility of finitely axiomatizable theories, a classical subject in mathematical logic. The volume summarizes investigations in the field that have led to much of the current progress, treating systematically all positive results concerning expressibility. Also included in this unique text are solutions to both the Vaught-Morely problem and the Hanf problem, and a number of new natural questions that provide prospects for further development of the theory.

The theory of quasivarieties constitutes an independent direction in algebra and mathematical logic and specializes in a fragment of first-order logic-the so-called universal Horn logic. This treatise uniformly presents the principal directions of the theory from an effective algebraic approach developed by the author himself. A revolutionary exposition, this influential text contains a number of results never before published in book form, featuring in-depth commentary for applications of quasivarieties to graphs, convex geometries, and formal languages. Key features include coverage of the Birkhoff-Mal'tsev problem on the structure of lattices of quasivarieties, helpful exercises, and an extensive list of references.