Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 March 2014
For countable structures and
, let
abbreviate the statement that every
sentence true in
also holds in
. One can define a back and forth game between the structures
and
that determines whether
. We verify that if θ is an Lω,ω sentence that is not equivalent to any Lω,ω
sentence, then there are countably infinite models
and
such that
⊨ θ,
⊨ ¬θ, and
. For countable languages ℒ there is a natural way to view ℒ structúres with universe ω as a topological space, Xℒ. Let [
] = {
∊ Xℒ∣
≅
} denote the isomorphism class of
. Let
and
be countably infinite nonisomorphic ℒ structures, and let C ⊆ ωω be any
subset. Our main result states that if
, then there is a continuous function f: ωω → Xℒ with the property that x ∊ C ⇒ f(x) ∊ [
] and x ∉ C ⇒ f(x) ∊ f(x) ∈ [
]. In fact, for α ≤ 3, the continuous function f can be defined from the
relation.