Connecting the two worlds: well-partial-orders and ordinal notation systems

Kruskal claims in his now-classical 1972 paper [47] that well-partial-orders are among the most frequently rediscovered mathematical objects. Well partial-orders have applications in many fields outside the theory of orders: computer science, proof theory, reverse mathematics, algebra, combinatorics, etc. The maximal order type of a well-partial-order characterizes that order’s strength. Moreover, in many natural cases, a well-partial-order’s maximal order type can be represented by an ordinal notation system. However, there are a number of natural well-partial-orders whose maximal order types and corresponding ordinal notation systems remain unknown. Prominent examples are Friedman’s well-partial-orders of trees with the gap-embeddability relation [76]. The main goal of this dissertation is to investigate a conjecture of Weiermann [86], thereby addressing the problem of the unknown maximal order types and corresponding ordinal notation systems for Friedman’s well-partial orders [76]. Weiermann’s conjecture concerns a class of structures, a typical member of which is denoted by T (W ), each are ordered by a certain gapembeddability relation. The conjecture indicates a possible approach towards determining the maximal order types of the structures T (W ). Specifically, Weiermann conjectures that the collapsing functions #i correspond to maximal linear extensions of these well-partial-orders T (W ), hence also that these collapsing functions correspond to maximal linear extensions of Friedman’s famous well-partial-orders