Axiomatic Classes of Intuitionistic Models

A class of Kripke models for intuitionistic propositional logic is 'axiomatic' if it is the class of all models of some set of formulas (axioms). This paper discusses various structural characterisations of axiomatic classes in terms of closure under certain constructions, including images of bisimulations, disjoint unions, ultrapowers and 'prime extensions'. The prime extension of a model is a new model whose points are the prime filters of the lattice of upwardly closed subsets of the original model. We also construct and analyse a 'definable' extension whose points are prime filters of definable sets. A structural explanation is given of why a class that is closed under images of bisimulations and invariant under prime/definable extensions must be invariant under arbitrary ultrapowers. This uses iterated ultrapowers and saturation.