We bring together some facts about the weak pigeonhole principle from bounded arithmetic, complexity theory, cryptography and abstract model theory. We characterize the models of arithmetic in which WPHP fails as those which are determined by an initial segment and prove a conditional separation result in bounded arithmetic, that PV + lies strictly between PV and S21 in strength, assuming that the cryptosystem RSA is secure.

We look for a converse to a result from [N. Thapen, A model-theoretic characterization of the weak pigeonhole principle, Annals of Pure and Applied Logic 118 175–195] that if the weak pigeonhole principle fails in a model K of bounded arithmetic, then there is an end-extension of K interpretable inside K. We show that if a model J of an induction-free theory of arithmetic is interpretable inside K, then either J is isomorphic to an initial segment of K , or (...) K is isomorphic to an initial segment of J and in this case the weak pigeonhole principle fails in K. This result is formulated in terms of a theory of bounded arithmetic with a greatest element. We go on to consider structures defined by oracles, and use the probabilistic witnessing theorem for to give a general criterion for what can be proved about these using the weak pigeonhole principle. We also show that the injective WPHP is not provable in this theory in the relativized case. (shrink)