Scott rank of Polish metric spaces (Q741089)

Suppose that \(\mathcal{L}\) is a countable relational language and \(M\) an \(\mathcal{L}\)-structure. The relation \(\equiv_\alpha\), for \(\alpha\) an ordinal, is defined on ordered tuples of \(M\) of the same length by declaring: (i) \(\vec a\equiv_0 \vec b\) if and only if \(\vec a\) and \(\vec b\) have the same quantifier-free type; (ii) \(\vec a\equiv_\alpha \vec b\) if and only if \(\vec a\equiv_\beta \vec b\) for all \(\beta<\alpha\) when \(\alpha\) is a limit ordinal; and (iii) if \(\alpha=\beta+1\), then \(\vec a\equiv_\alpha \vec b\) if and only if for every \(x_a,x_b\in M\), there are \(y_b,y_a\in M\) such that \(\vec ax_a\equiv_\beta \vec by_b\) and \(\vec ay_a\equiv_\beta \vec bx_b\). One then defines the Scott rank of the pair \((\vec a,\vec b)\), denoted \(\mathrm{sr}(\vec a,\vec b)\), to be \(\inf\{\alpha : \vec a\not\equiv_\alpha \vec b\}\), where the infimum of the entire class of ordinals is defined to be \(-1\). Finally, the Scott rank of \(M\) is \(\sup\{\mathrm{sr}(\vec a,\vec b)+1\}\), where the supremum is taken over all pairs of ordered tuples from \(M\) of the same length. The Scott rank of a structure \(M\) is easily seen to be bounded by \(|M|^+\). \textit{S. Friedman} et al. [``Scott analysis of Polish spaces'', Preprint] and \textit{A. Nies} [``The complexity of similarity relations for Polish metric spaces'', Talk given during the Universality and Homogeneity Trimester, Hausdorff Institute for Mathematics, Bonn] provided examples of Polish metric spaces (viewed as structures in the natural countable language for metric spaces) of arbitrarily high countable Scott rank. Nies then asked whether or not all Polish metric spaces have countable Scott rank. The main theorem of this paper is an affirmative answer to this question. The proof uses an Ehrenfeucht-Fraisse game interpretation of the relation \(\equiv_\alpha\) as well as some elementary set theory.