Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 February 2021
We define the Scott complexity of a countable structure to be the least complexity of a Scott sentence for that structure. This is a finer notion of complexity than Scott rank: it distinguishes between whether the simplest Scott sentence is
$\Sigma _{\alpha }$
,
$\Pi _{\alpha }$
, or
$\mathrm {d-}\Sigma _{\alpha }$
. We give a complete classification of the possible Scott complexities, including an example of a structure whose simplest Scott sentence is
$\Sigma _{\lambda + 1}$
for
$\lambda $
a limit ordinal. This answers a question left open by A. Miller.
We also construct examples of computable structures of high Scott rank with Scott complexities
$\Sigma _{\omega _1^{CK}+1}$
and
$\mathrm {d-}\Sigma _{\omega _1^{CK}+1}$
. There are three other possible Scott complexities for a computable structure of high Scott rank:
$\Pi _{\omega _1^{CK}}$
,
$\Pi _{\omega _1^{CK}+1}$
,
$\Sigma _{\omega _1^{CK}+1}$
. Examples of these were already known. Our examples are computable structures of Scott rank
$\omega _1^{CK}+1$
which, after naming finitely many constants, have Scott rank
$\omega _1^{CK}$
. The existence of such structures was an open question.