Set Theory is Interpretable in the Automorphism Group of an Infinitely Generated Free Group

In 6] S. Shelah showed that in the endomorphism semi-groupof an infinitely generated algebra which is free in a varietyone can interpret some set theory. It follows from his resultsthat, for an algebra F which is free of infinite rank in avariety of algebras in a language L, if > |L|, then thefirst-order theory of the endomorphism semi-group of F, Th(End(F)),syntactically interprets Th(,L₂), the second-order theory ofthe cardinal . This means that for any second-order sentence of empty language there exists *, a first-order sentence ofsemi-group language, such that for any infinite cardinal >|L|, Th(,L₂)*Th(End(F)) In his paper Shelah notes that it is natural to study a similarproblem for automorphism groups instead of endomorphism semi-groups;a priori the expressive power of the first-order logic for automorphismgroups is less than the one for endomorphism semi-groups. Forinstance, according to Shelah's results on permutation groups4, 5], one cannot interpret set theory by means of first-orderlogic in the permutation group of an infinite set, the automorphismgroup of an algebra in empty language. On the other hand, onecan do this in the endomorphism semi-group of such an algebra. In 7, 8] the author found a solution for the case of the varietyof vector spaces over a fixed field. If V is a vector spaceof an infinite dimension over a division ring D, then the theoryTh(, L₂) is interpretable in the first-order theory of GL(V),the automorphism group of V. When a field D is countable anddefinable up to isomorphism by a second-order sentence, thenthe theories Th(GL(V)) and Th(, L₂) are mutually syntacticallyinterpretable. In the general case, the formulation is a bitmore complicated. The main result of this paper states that a similar result holdsfor the variety of all groups.