# The Church-Kleene ordinal, $\omega_1^{ck}$

The Church-Kleene ordinal $\omega_1^{ck}$ is the supremum of the computable ordinals, where an ordinal $\alpha$ is computable if there is a computable relation $\lhd$ on $\mathbb{N}$ of order type $\alpha$, that is, such that $\langle\alpha,\lt\rangle\cong\langle\mathbb{N},\lhd\rangle$.

This ordinal is closed under all of the elementary ordinal arithmetic operations, such as successor, addition, multiplication and exponentiation.

Depending on conventions, there are two possibilities for where $$\omega_1^{ck}$$ appears on the hierarchy of admissible ordinals:

• The Church-Kleene ordinal is the least admissible ordinal. This is when Kripke-Platek set theory is considered to include the axiom of infinity, so $$L_\omega\not\vDash\textrm{KP}$$.
• $$\omega$$ and $$\omega_1^{ck}$$ are the two smallest admissible ordinals. This is when Kripke-Platek set theory is not considered to include the axiom of infinity, so $$L_\omega\vDash\textrm{KP}$$.

## Relativized Church-Kleene ordinal

The Church-Kleene idea easily relativizes to oracles, where for any real $x$, we define $\omega_1^x$ to be the supremum of the $x$-computable ordinals. This is also the least admissible ordinal relative to $x$, and every countable successor admissible ordinal is $\omega_1^x$ for some $x$. Note that here, $$\omega_1^x$$ doesn't denote the set defined by a relativized definition of $$\omega_1$$, like what $$\omega_1^L$$ often denotes.

Friedman, Jensen, and Sacks proved that any countable admissible ordinal is of the form $$\omega_1^x$$ for some real $$x$$. (source)

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