An axiomatic treatment of synthetic domain theory is presented, in the fram
ework of the internal logic of an arbitrary topos. We present new proofs of
known facts, new equivalences between our axioms and known principles, and
proofs of new facts, such as the theorem that the regular complete objects
are closed under lifting (and hence well-complete). Sn Sections 2-4 we inv
estigate models, and obtain independence results. In Section 2 we look at a
model in de Modified realizability Topos, where the Scott Principle fails,
and the complete objects are not closed under lifting. Section 3 treats th
e standard model in the Effective Topos. Theorem 3.2 gives a new characteri
zation of the initial lift-algebra relative to the dominance. We prove that
in the standard case it is not the internal colimit of the chain 0 --> L(0
) --> L-2(0) --> .... The models in Sections 2 and 3 compare via an adjunct
ion. Section 4 discusses a model in a Grothendieck topos. A feature here is
that N is not well-complete (where N is the natural numbers object), where
as 2 is. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. MSC: 68Q55; (0
3D75; 18B99).