Imaginary modules (Q4032653)

We investigate variants of Shelah's ``imaginary universe'' \(T^{eq}\) for theories of modules and, more generally, for ``Abelian structures'' in the sense of Fisher. The main feature of these variants is that we factor out only by equivalence relations defined by positive primitive formulas. It is shown that this is adequate for the usual stability-theoretic purposes. In this context the imaginary construction \(T^{eq+}\) is essentially an algebraic one. In particular, since models of \(T^{eq+}\) are ``Abelian structures'' the usual questions of the model theory of modules arise, and so we give a detailed description of hulls in \(T^{eq+}\) and the machinery for working with them. We finish by describing how the module- theoretic characterizations of basic stability-theoretic concepts such as forking, domination and regularity lift to this context. In retrospect, we should have given more attention to the version of \(T^{eq+}\) which has a sort for each \(pp\)-defined subgroup of a \(pp\)- defined quotient sort since this is the natural one to use when applying functor-theoretic techniques in the model theory of modules. In any case, the modifications are trivial.