Analysability of finite U-rank types are explored both in general and in the theory ${\rm{DC}}{{\rm{F}}_0}$. The well-known fact that the equation $\delta \left( {{\rm{log}}\,\delta x} \right) = 0$ is analysable in but not almost internal to the constants is generalized to show that $\underbrace {{\rm{log}}\,\delta \cdots {\rm{log}}\,\delta }_nx = 0$ is not analysable in the constants in $\left( {n - 1} \right)$-steps. The notion of a canonical analysis is introduced–-namely an analysis that is of minimal length and interalgebraic with every other analysis of that length. Not every analysable type admits a canonical analysis. Using properties of reductions and coreductions in theories with the canonical base property, it is constructed, for any sequence of positive integers $\left( {{n_1}, \ldots ,{n_\ell }} \right)$, a type in ${\rm{DC}}{{\rm{F}}_0}$ that admits a canonical analysis with the property that the ith step has U-rank ${n_i}$.

We define and study a metric independence notion in a homogeneous metric abstract elementary class with perturbations that is dp-superstable (superstable wrt. the perturbation topology), weakly simple and has complete type spaces and we give a new example of such a class based on B. Zilber’s approximations of Weyl algebras. We introduce a way to measure the dependence of a tuple a from a set B over another set A. We prove basic properties of the notion, e.g., that a is independent of B over A in the usual sense of homogeneous model theory if and only if the measure of dependence is < ε for all ε > 0. In well behaved situations, the measure corresponds to the distance to a free extension. As an example of our measure of dependence we show a connection between the measure and entropy in models from quantum mechanics in which the spectrum of the observable is discrete. As an application, we show that weak simplicity implies a very strong form of simplicity and study the question of when the dependence inside a set of all realisations of some type can be seen to arise from a pregeometry in cases when the type is not regular. In the end of the paper, we demonstrate our notions and results in one more example: a class built from the p-adic integers.

We use axioms of abstract ternary relations to define the notion of a free amalgamation theory. These form a subclass of first-order theories, without the strict order property, encompassing many prominent examples of countable structures in relational languages, in which the class of algebraically closed substructures is closed under free amalgamation. We show that any free amalgamation theory has elimination of hyperimaginaries and weak elimination of imaginaries. With this result, we use several families of well-known homogeneous structures to give new examples of rosy theories. We then prove that, for free amalgamation theories, simplicity coincides with NTP2 and, assuming modularity, with NSOP3 as well. We also show that any simple free amalgamation theory is 1-based. Finally, we prove a combinatorial characterization of simplicity for Fraïssé limits with free amalgamation, which provides new context for the fact that the generic Kn-free graphs are SOP3, while the higher arity generic $K_n^r$-free r-hypergraphs are simple.

We prove that if K is an (infinite) stable field whose generic type has weight 1, then K is separably closed. We also obtain some partial results about stable groups and fields whose generic type has finite weight, as well as about strongly stable fields (where by definition all types have finite weight).

We consider a new subgroup In(G) in any group G of finite Morley rank. This definably characteristic subgroup is the smallest normal subgroup of G from which we can hope to build a geometry over the quotient group G/ In(G). We say that G is a geometric group if In(G) is trivial.

This paper is a discussion of a conjecture which states that every geometric group G of finite Morley rank is definably linear over a ring K1 ⊕…⊕ Kn where K1,…,Kn are some interpretable fields. This linearity conjecture seems to generalize the Cherlin–Zil'ber conjecture in a very large class of groups of finite Morley rank.

We show that, if this linearity conjecture is true, then there is a Rosenlicht theorem for groups of finite Morley rank, in the sense that the quotient group of any connected group of finite Morley rank by its hypercentre is definably linear.

In order to construct a counterexample to Zilber's conjecture—that a strongly minimal set has a degenerate, affine or field-like geometry—Ehud Hrushovski invented an amalgamation technique which has yielded all the exotic geometries so far. We shall present a framework for this construction in the language of standard geometric stability and show how some of the recent constructions fit into this setting. We also ask some fundamental questions concerning this method.

The notion of an angular function has been introduced by Zilber as one possible way of connecting non-commutative geometry with two ‘counterexamples’ from model theory: the non-classical Zariski curves of Hrushovski and Zilber, and Poizat's field with green points. This article discusses some questions of Zilber relating to existentially closed structures in the class of algebraically closed fields with an angular function.

We construct the free fusion of two geometric thories over a common ω-categorical strongly minimal reduct. If the two theories are supersimple of rank 1 (and satisfy an additional hypothesis true in particular for stable theories or trivial reduct), the completions of the free fusion are supersimple of rank at most ω.

Dichotomies in various conjectures from algebraic geometry are in fact occurrences of the dichotomy among Zariski structures. This is what Hrushovski showed and which enabled him to solve, positively, the geometric Mordell–Lang conjecture in positive characteristic. Are we able now to avoid this use of Zariski structures? Pillay and Ziegler have given a direct proof that works for semi-abelian varieties they called ‘very thin’, which include the ordinary abelian varieties. But it does not apply in all generality: we describe here an abelian variety which is not very thin. More generally, we consider from a model-theoretical point of view several questions about the fields of definition of semi-abelian varieties.

We prove that if M0 is a model of a simple theory, and p(x) is a complete type of Cantor–Bendixon rank 1 over M0, then p is stationary and regular. As a consequence we obtain another proof that any countable model M0 of a countable complete simple theory T has infinitely many countable elementary extensions up to M0-isomorphism. The latter extends earlier results of the author in the stable case, and is a special case of a recent result of Tanovic.