A hyperimmune minimal degree and an ANR 2-minimal degree (Q609761)

This paper contains two new constructions related to minimal degrees in the Turing degrees. First, the author develops a new way of directly constructing a hyperimmune minimal degree. W. Miller and Martin had asked whether such a degree exists, and Cooper answered it as a corollary of his result that every degree above \({\mathbf 0}'\) is the jump of a minimal degree. Cooper's proof is indirect, and there was no method which explicitly builds a hyperimmune minimal degree. This seemed to be an obstacle for some minimal degree constructions. One of the main ideas in Cai's construction is to force with subtrees of \(\omega^{<\omega}\) which have a path that is not dominated by any computable function. Secondly the author shows that there is a minimal-over-a-minimal degree (i.e., a degree that is minimal relative to a minimal degree) which is array-nonrecursive (ANR). This contrasts with Downey, Jockusch, and Stob's result that no ANR degree can be minimal. Using another result of Downey, Jockusch, and Stob, the author gets that there is a minimal-over-a-minimal degree which has no strong minimal cover. All this work represents an important step towards Yate's old question of whether every minimal degree has a strong minimal cover.