A note on weakly o-minimal structures and definable completeness (Q2472613)

The paper under review deals with the landscape of ordered structures. There are two main relaxations of the well-known definition of o-minimal structures: A structure expanding a dense linear order is called weakly o-minimal if every unary definable set is a finite union of convex sets. A structure expanding a dense linear order is called definably complete if every unary definable set which is bounded from above (from below) has a supremum (an infimum). Note that a weakly o-minimal structure which is definably complete is o-minimal. O-minimal structures exhibit tameness; the definable sets have nice topological properties. O-minimal structures can be viewed as those definably complete structures having good properties. Also weakly o-minimal structures (theories) show to a certain extent tameness [see \textit{D. Macpherson, D. Marker} and \textit{C. Steinhorn}, ``Weakly o-minimal structures and real closed fields'', Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 352, No. 12, 5435--5483 (2000; Zbl 0982.03021)]. The question of the author is now the following: Does the notion of weakly o-minimal structures capture exactly those ordered structures with nice topological properties which fail to be definably complete? He answers this question negatively by looking at the following problem: Given a definable set that is closed and bounded, is the image of the set by applying a coordinate transformation again closed? (Note that this holds in o-minimal structures by the results of \textit{C. Miller} [``Expansions of dense linear orders with the intermediate value property'', J. Symb. Log. 66, No. 4, 1783--1790 (2001; Zbl 1001.03039)].) The author gives in the first part of the paper on the one hand a weakly o-minimal structure where the above holds and on the other hand a weakly o-minimal structure where it does not necessarily hold. The second part of the paper deals with the question whether certain tame properties of a structure (concerning non-existence of infinite discrete sets or uniform finiteness) implies weak o-minimality (as they imply o-minimality assuming definable completeness). The author answers also this question negatively.