Real closed exponential subfields of pseudo-exponential fields (Q372638)

The work presented in this paper is part of Zilber's programmatic approach to understand the first-order theory of complex exponentiation, i.e.~the theory of \(\mathbb{C}_{\mathrm{exp}}:= \langle \mathbb{C},+,\cdot,0,1,e^z\rangle\). \textit{B. Zilber} [Ann. Pure Appl. Logic 132, No. 1, 67--95 (2005; Zbl 1076.03024)] introduced the class of pseudo-exponential fields and showed that, for every uncountable cardinal \(\kappa\), there is a unique pseudo-exponential field of that cardinality. Furthermore, he conjectured that the complex exponential field is the unique pseudo-exponential field of size continuum which is often called the Zilber field. As -- by the definition of pseudo-exponentiation -- a proof of Zilber's conjecture requires a proof of Schanuel's conjecture, it is currently still very open. However, there have been several approaches to gather evidence in favour of Zilber's conjecture in recent years by showing that results which are well-known for the complex exponential field also hold in the Zilber field. In particular, the results in this paper give a glimpse of the strong ties between these two fields in such a way. The main result of this paper is that any algebraically closed exponential field satisfying Schanuel's conjecture has continuum many non-isomorphic countable real closed exponential subfields, each with an order-preserving exponential map which is surjective onto the nonnegative elements (Theorem 3). In particular, the result holds for the unique pseudo-exponential field of a given uncountable cardinality. In the proof, the author first constructs real closed exponential fields with order-preserving exponential map without the surjectivity assumption (Corollary 17). In a second step, the construction is refined such that every positive element is indeed in the image of the exponential map (Section 4).