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Mohammad Golshani
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Undefinability of $\mathbb{Z}$ in the reals

It is a well-known fact that $\mathbb{Z}$ is not definable in the structure $\mathcal{R}=(\mathbb{R}, +, -, < , 0, 1)$. This follows from Tarski's quantifier elimination, and in fact we can conclude that the structure $\mathcal{R}$ is an o-minimal structure.

Question. Is there a more direct proof of the above undefinability result?

I essentially mean a proof which does not use the above result of Tarski or its variants.

In general, what other different proofs of the above result exist? Providing references is appreciated.

Mohammad Golshani
  • 32.2k
  • 2
  • 99
  • 198