Reversibility of Extreme Relational Structures

Abstract

A relational structure $\mathbb{X}$ is called reversible iff each bijective homomorphism from $\mathbb{X}$ onto $\mathbb{X}$ is an isomorphism, and linear orders are prototypical examples of such structures. One way to detect new reversible structures of a given relational language $L$ is to notice that the maximal or minimal elements of isomorphism-invariant sets of interpretations of the language $L$ on a fixed domain $X$ determine reversible structures. We isolate certain syntactical conditions providing that a consistent $L_{\infty \omega }$-theory defines a class of interpretations having extreme elements on a fixed domain and detect several classes of reversible structures. In particular, we characterize the reversible countable ultrahomogeneous graphs.