We draw a connection between the model-theoretic notions of modularity (or one-basedness), orthogonality and internality, as applied to difference fields, and questions of descent in in algebraic dynamics. In particular we prove in any dimension a strong dynamical version of Northcott's theorem for function fields, answering a question of Szpiro and Tucker and generalizing a theorem of Baker's for the projective line.

The paper comes in three parts. This first part contains an exposition some of the main results of the model theory of difference fields, and their immediate connection to questions of descent in algebraic dynamics. We present the model-theoretic notion of internality in a context that does not require a universal domain with quantifier-elimination. We also note a version of canonical heights that applies well beyond polarized algebraic dynamics. Part II sharpens the structure theory to arbitrary base fields and constructible maps where in part I we emphasize finite base change and correspondences. Part III will include precise structure theorems related to the Galois theory considered here, and will enable a sharpening of the descent results for non-modular dynamics.

This second part of the paper strengthens the descent theory described in the first part to rational maps and arbitrary base fields. We obtain in particular a decomposition of any difference field extension into a tower of finite, field-internal and one-based difference field extensions. This is needed in order to obtain the ‘dynamical Northcott’ Theorem 1.11 of Part I in sharp form.

We present the details of a model-theoretic proof of an analogue of the Manin–Mumford conjecture for semiabelian varieties in positive characteristic. As a by-product of the proof we reduce the general positive-characteristic Mordell–Lang problem to a question about purely inseparable points on subvarieties of semiabelian varieties.

We classify all possible combinatorial geometries associated with one-dimensional difference equations, in any characteristic. The theory of difference fields admits a proper interpretation of itself, namely the reduct replacing the automorphism by its nth power. We show that these reducts admit a successively smoother theory as n becomes large; and we succeed in defining a limit structure to these reducts, or rather to the structure they induce on one-dimensional sets. This limit structure is shown to be a Zariski geometry in (roughly) the sense of Hrushovski and Zil'ber. The trichotomy is thus obtained for the limit structure as a consequence of a general theorem, and then shown to be inherited by the original theory.

2000 Mathematical Subject Classification: 03C60; (primary) 03C45, 03C98, 08A35, 12H10 (secondary)