Universal homogeneous constraint structures and the hom-equivalence classes of weakly oligomorphic structures

Abstract

We derive a new sufficient condition for the existence of {\omega}-categorical universal structures in classes of relational structures with constraints, augmenting results by Cherlin, Shelah, Chi, and Hubi\v{c}ka and Ne\v{s}et\v{r}il. Using this result we show that the hom-equivalence class of any countable weakly oligomorphic structure has up to isomorphism a unique model-complete smallest and greatest element, both of which are {\omega}-categorical. As the main tool we introduce the category of constraint structures, show the existence of universal homogeneous objects, and study their automorphism groups. All constructions rest on a category-theoretic version of Fra\"iss\'e's Theorem due to Droste and G\"obel. We derive sufficient conditions for a comma category to contain a universal homogeneous object. This research is motivated by the observation that all countable models of the theory of a weakly oligomorphic structure are hom-equivalent---a result akin to (part of) the Ryll-Nardzewski Theorem.