[Math] A first order sentence such that the finite Spectrum of that sentence is the prime numbers

axiomslogicmodel-theoryprime numbers

The finite spectrum of a theory $T$ is the set of natural numbers such that there exists a model of that size. That is $Fs(T):= \{n \in \mathbb{N} | \exists \mathcal{M}\models T : |\mathcal{M}| =n\}$ . What I am asking for is a finitely axiomatized $T$ such that $Fs(T)$ is the set of prime numbers.

In other words in what specific language $L$, and what specific $L$-sentence $\phi$ has the property that $Fs(\{\phi\})$ is the set of prime numbers?

Best Answer

Rather than giving an explicit answer, I'm going to give a hint. I saw this problem when I was in grad school, and I assume many other people did too. The secret to these problems is to have a huge library of mathematical results to draw on. Then you make up your answer to exploit some theorem that you already know. In this case, one way to start is to make a formula which forces the model to resemble an initial segment $\{1, \ldots, n\}$ of the natural numbers with relations for the restrictions of the graphs of the addition and multiplication functions to triples from that subset.

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