Distinguishing number of countable homogeneous relational structures (Q2380452)

Summary: The distinguishing number of a graph \(G\) is the smallest positive integer \(r\) such that \(G\) has a labeling of its vertices with \(r\) labels for which there is no non-trivial automorphism of \(G\) preserving these labels. In early work, \textit{M. O. Albertson} and \textit{K. L. Collins} [Electron. J. Comb. 3, No. 1, Research paper R18, 17 p. (1996); printed version J. Comb. 3, No. 1, 259--275 (1996; Zbl 0851.05088)] computed the distinguishing number for various finite graphs, and more recently \textit{W. Imrich}, \textit{S. Klavžar} and \textit{V. Trofimov} [Electron. J. Comb. 14, No. 1, Research paper R36, 12 p. (2007; Zbl 1124.05044)] computed the distinguishing number of some infinite graphs, showing in particular that the random graph has distinguishing number 2. We compute the distinguishing number of various other finite and countable homogeneous structures, including undirected and directed graphs, and posets. We show that this number is in most cases two or infinite, and besides a few exceptions conjecture that this is so for all primitive homogeneous countable structures.