arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Saharon Shelah.
We investigate the pressing down game and its relation to the Banach Mazur game. In particular we show: Consistently, there is a nowhere precipitous normal ideal $I$ on $\aleph_2$ such that player nonempty wins the pressing down game of length $\aleph_1$ on $I$ even if player empty starts.
A 27 years old and still open problem of Juhasz and van Mill asks whether there exists a cardinal kappa such that every regular dense in itself countably compact space has a dense in itself subset of cardinality at most kappa. We give a negative answer for the analogous question where_regular_ is weakened to_Hausdorff_, and_coutnably compact_ is strengthened to_sequentially compact_.
Using the Continuum Hyporthesis, we prove that there is a Menger-bounded (also called o-bounded) subgroup of the Baer-Specker group Z^N, whose square is not Menger-bounded. This settles a major open problem concerning boundedness notions for groups, and implies that Menger-bounded groups need not be Scheepers-bounded. This also answers some questions of Banakh, Nickolas, and Sanchis.
It is consistent (relative to ZFC) that the union of max{b,g} many families in the Baire space which are not finitely dominating is not dominating. In particular, it is consistent that for each nonprincipal ultrafilter U, the cofinality of the reduced ultrapower w^w/U is greater than max{b,g}. The model is constructed by oracle chain condition forcing, to which we give a self-contained introduction.
We solve four out of the six open problems concerning critical cardinalities of topological diagonalization properties involving tau-covers, show that the remaining two cardinals are equal, and give a consistency result concerning this remaining cardinal. Consequently, 21 open problems concerning potential implications between these properties are settled. We also give structural results based on the combinatorial techniques.
Motivated by the minimal tower problem, an earlier work studied diagonalizations of covers where the covers are related to linear quasiorders (tau-covers). We deal with two types of combinatorial questions which arise from this study. 1. Two new cardinals introduced in the topological study are expressed in terms of well known cardinals characteristics of the continuum. 2. We study the additivity numbers of the combinatorial notions corresponding to the topological diagonalization notions. This gives new insights on the structure of the eventual dominance ordering on the Baire space, the almost inclusion ordering on the Rothberger space, and the interactions between them.
We answer a question of Just, Miller, Scheepers and Szeptycki whether certain diagonalization properties for sequences of open covers are provably closed under taking finite or countable unions. This is a very concise paper. For a self-contained, complete, and extended treatment of the topic see math.GN/0604451
We continue investigations of reasonable ultrafilters on uncountable cardinals defined in math.LO/0407498. We introduce stronger properties of ultrafilters and we show that those properties may be handled in lambda-support iterations of reasonably bounding forcing notions. We use this to show that consistently there are reasonable ultrafilters on an inaccessible cardinal lambda with generating system of size less than 2^lambda . We also show how reasonable ultrafilters can be killed by forcing notions which have enough reasonable completeness to be iterated with lambda-supports (and we show the appropriate preservation theorem).
We prove in ZF that there is an inner product space, in fact, nicely definable with no orthonormal basis.
We show that that a certain class of semi-proper iterations does not add omega-sequences. As a result, starting from suitable large cardinals one can obtain a model in which the Continuum Hypothesis holds and every function from omega_1 to omega_1 is bounded by a canonical function on a club, and so omega_1 is the omega_2-nd canonical function.
We introduce several properties of forcing notions which imply that their lambda-support iterations are lambda-proper. Our methods and techniques refine those studied in math.LO/9906024, math.LO/0210205, math.LO/0508272 and math.LO/0605067, covering some new forcing notions (though the exact relation of the new properties to the old ones remains undecided).
We throw some light on the question: is there a MAD family (= a family of infinite subsets of N, the intersection of any two is finite) which is completely separable (i.e. any X subseteq N is included in a finite union of members of the family or include a member of the family). We prove that it is hard to prove the consistency of the negation: (a) if 2^{aleph_0} < aleph_omega, then there is such a family (b) if there is no such families then some situation related to pcf holds whose consistency is large.
Answering a question of Juhasz, Soukup and Szentmiklóssy we show that it is consistent that some first countable space of uncountable weight does not contain an uncountable subspace which has an irreducible base.
We prove that e.g. there is no omega_4-sequence in (omega_3)^{omega_3} increasing modulo the ideal of countable sets.
We consider the random graph M^n_{\bar{p}} on the set [n], were the probability of {x,y} being an edge is p_{|x-y|}, and \bar{p}=(p_1,p_2,p_3,...) is a series of probabilities. We consider the set of all \bar{q} derived from \bar{p} by inserting 0 probabilities to \bar{p}, or alternatively by decreasing some of the p_i. We say that \bar{p} hereditarily satisfies the 0-1 law if the 0-1 law (for first order logic) holds in M^n_{\bar{q}} for any \bar{q} derived from \bar{p} in the relevant way described above. We give a necessary and sufficient condition on \bar{p} for it to hereditarily satisfy the 0-1 law.
We deal with models of Peano arithmetic (specifically with a question of Ali Enayat). The methods are from creature forcing. We find an expansion of N such that its theory has models with no (elementary) end extensions. In fact there is a Borel uncountable set of subsets of N such that expanding N by any uncountably many of them suffice. Also we find arithmetically closed A with no definably closed ultrafilter on it.
For cardinals lambda, kappa, theta we consider the class of graphs of cardinality lambda which has no subgraph which is (kappa, theta)-complete bipartite graph. The question is whether in such a class there is a universal one under (weak) embedding. We solve this problem completely under GCH. Under various assumptions mostly related to cardinal arithmetic we prove nonexistence of universals for this problem and some related ones.