Summary. The notion of a "ptyx" is formalised in second-order arithmetic, and, using proof-theoretic techniques based on sequent-calculus, bounds are obtained for the ptykes of type 1 and 2 which can be proved to be ptykes using arithmetic comprehension.
IntroductionThe goal of this paper is to formalise the notion of "ptykes" (introduced in [3]) in second-order arithmetic, and to show how they can be analysed using proof-theoretic techniques. We derive bounds for the 1-ptykes (i.e. dilators) and 2-ptykes provable in the theory ACA o of arithmetic comprehension (together with, respectively, the true //11 and//21 sentences). This extends the traditional proof-theoretic objective of finding a bound on the provable well-orderings of a theory (the well-orderings are the ptykes of the lowest level, the "0-ptykes"). Statements of "being an n-ptyx" are canonical 1 H~'+I sentences in the same way that well-ordering statements are (as proved by Kleene) canonical//~ sentences -see Sect. 3.The same ideas used here can be applied to the finding of bounds on the provable dilators and 2-ptykes of other theories of second-order arithmetic. For example, drawing on the notation and methods of [1] (where the ordinals of certain theories are established) the author has found bounds on the dilators and 2-ptykes provable in H~CA (H~ comprehension).
ConventionsWe shall often use letters with bars to represent tuples, for example g may denote al, ..., a~, in which case l(~) denotes k (the length of the tuple). We denote by O~b the concatenation of the tuples O~ and b.Mathematics Subject Classification (1991): 03FI0, 0JF15