Quantifier elimination in discriminator varieties (Q1084391)

We classify those classes of elements of a discriminator variety V, which admit quantifier elimination (q.e.) in terms of classes of simple elements of V. Discriminator varieties come up in decidability questions for certain varieties. Burris and McKenzie have shown that any finitely generated modular variety of finite type, which is decidable, is the product of a finitely generated discriminator variety and of a decidable abelian variety. Recently McKenzie and Valeriote have generalized this result to decidable locally finite varieties. Our starting point is a representation theorem due to Werner. Namely any non trivial element A of V is isomorphic to the structure of all sections with clopen supports of a locally boolean sheaf of simple elements of V. We show that quantifier elimination in such structures implies certain properties both of the base space and of the class of the stalks. For proving that the conditions that we derive are indeed sufficient we use the Feferman-Vaught theorem on finite products, the construction, due to Boffa and Cherlin, of quantifier eliminable boolean valued structures starting with certain quantifier eliminable classes of structures and a generalization of this latter result to a non compact situation. Then we analyse the effectiveness of the transfer of q.e. from the class of stalks to the structure of sections and vice versa. Finally we describe classes of elements of V which admit q.e. in terms of classes of simple elements of V.