Abstract As a continuation of the work of the third author in [5], we make further observations on the features of Galois cohomology in the general model theoretic context. We make explicit the connection between forms of definable groups and first cohomology sets with coefficients in a suitable automorphism group. We then use a method of twisting cohomology (inspired by Serre’s algebraic twisting) to describe arbitrary fibres in cohomology sequences—yielding a useful “finiteness” result on cohomology sets. Applied to the special case of differential fields and Kolchin’s constrained cohomology, we complete results from [3] by proving that the first constrained cohomology set of a differential algebraic group over a bounded, differentially large, field is countable.

Abstract A model companion is shown to exist for the theory of partial differential fields of characteristic zero equipped with free operators that commute with the derivations. The free operators here are those introduced in [R. Moosa and T. Scanlon, Model theory of fields with free operators in characteristic zero, Journal of Mathematical Logic 14(2), 2014]. The proof relies on a new lifting lemma in differential algebra: a differential version of Hensel’s Lemma for local finite algebras over differentially closed fields.