Uniform first order interpretation of the second order theory of countable groups of homeomorphisms

Thomas Koberda and Javier de la Nuez González

Vol. 341 (2026), No. 1, 69–101

DOI: 10.2140/pjm.2026.341.69

Abstract

We show that the first order theory of the homeomorphism group of a compact manifold interprets the full second order theory of countable groups of homeomorphisms of the manifold. The interpretation is uniform across manifolds of bounded dimension. As a consequence, many classical problems in group theory and geometry (e.g., the linearity of mapping classes of compact $2$-manifolds) are encoded as elementary properties of homeomorphism groups of manifolds. Furthermore, the homeomorphism group uniformly interprets the Borel and projective hierarchies of the homeomorphism group, which gives a characterization of definable subsets of the homeomorphism group. Finally, we prove analogues of Rice’s theorem from computability theory for homeomorphism groups of manifolds. As a consequence, it follows that the collection of sentences that isolate the homeomorphism group of a particular manifold, or that isolate the homeomorphism groups of manifolds in general, is not definable in second order arithmetic, and that membership of particular sentences in these collections cannot be proved in ZFC.

Keywords

homeomorphism group, manifold, first order theory, second order theory

Mathematical Subject Classification

Primary: 20A15, 57S05

Secondary: 03C07, 57S25, 57M60

Milestones

Received: 6 February 2024

Revised: 4 November 2025

Accepted: 5 November 2025

Published: 10 March 2026