Francesco Paolo Gallinaro (University of Leeds)
Model Theory of the Complex Exponential Function
It is a well-known fact in model theory that subsets of the complex numbers that are definable in the language of rings (so, using polynomials) are either finite or cofinite. In the 1990s, some people started wondering what happens if you add the exponential to the mix: can we say anything meaningful about the subsets of the complex numbers definable using polynomials and exponentials? This question ended up having surprising ties to number theory and complex algebraic geometry. In this talk, I’ll introduce the topic and present some of these connections, focusing on the role of finding solutions to exponential-polynomial equations.