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Peter Laubenheimer, Thomas Schick, and Ulrich Stuhler: Completions of countable non-standard models of Q

In this note, we study non-standard models of the rational numbers with countably many elements. These are ordered fields, and so it makes sense to complete them, using non-standard Cauchy sequences. The main result of this note shows that these completions are real closed, i.e.~each positive number is a square, and each polynomial of odd degree has a root. We also give some information about the set of real parts of the finite elements of such completions. The main idea to achieve the results relies on a way to describe real zeros of a polynomial in terms of first order logic. This is achieved by carefully using the sign changes of such a polynomial.


Thomas Schick