Diophantine geometry over groups. II: Completions, closures and formal solutions (Q1812255)

The author continues to publish results on the structure of sets of solutions to systems of equations in a free group, projections of such sets, and the structure of elementary sets defined over a free group [for part I cf. Publ. Math., Inst Hautes Étud. Sci. 93, 31-105 (2001; Zbl 1018.20034)]. Merzlyakov's known theorem on solutions of positive sentences is generalized. It is known that if a sentence of the form \(\forall y\in V\;\exists x\;\Sigma(x,y,a)=1\wedge\Psi(x,y,a)\not=1\) is a true sentence, where \(V\) is a variety defined by a system of equations using the variables \(y\) and the coefficients \(a\), then there exists a collection of so called closures of the completions of the variety \(V\), and with each closure there is an associated formal solution \(x=x(s,z,y,a)\) defined over it so that each of the words in the system of equations obtained by reducing the variables \(x\) with the formal solutions \(x=x(s,z,y,a)\) in the system \(\Sigma(x,y,a)\) represents the trivial element in the limit group associated with the corresponding closure of the variety \(V\). The formal limit groups and their associated formal Makanin-Razborov diagrams are presented precisely. They encode the entire collection of formal solutions associated with the given sentence. It is necessary to get a quantifier elimination procedure for predicates defined over a free group.