On Non-Standard Models of Peano Arithmetic and Tennenbaum's Theorem

Abstract

Throughout the course of mathematical history, generalizations of previously understood concepts and structures have led to the fruitful development of the hierarchy of number systems, non-euclidean geometry, and many other epochal phases in mathematical progress. In the study of formalized theories of arithmetic, it is only natural to consider the extension from the standard model of Peano arithmetic, $\langle \mathbb{N},+,\times,\leq,0,1 \rangle$, to non-standard models of arithmetic. The existence of non-standard models of Peano arithmetic provided motivation in the early $20^{th}$ century for a variety of questions in model theory regarding the classification of models up to isomorphism and the properties that non-standard models of Peano arithmetic have. This paper presents these questions and the necessary results to prove Tennenbaum's Theorem, which draws an explicit line between the properties of standard and non-standard models; namely, that no countable non-standard model of Peano arithmetic is recursive. These model-theoretic results have contributed to the foundational framework within which research programs developed by Skolem, Rosser, Tarski, Mostowski and others have flourished. While such foundational topics were crucial to active fields of research during the middle of the $20^{th}$ century, numerous open questions about models of arithmetic, and model theory in general, still remain pertinent to the realm of $21^{st}$ century mathematical discourse.