Blog Archives

A new small Dowker space

Joint work with Roy Shalev and Stevo Todorcevic. Abstract. It is proved that if there exists a Luzin set, or if either the stick principle or $\diamondsuit(\mathfrak b)$ hold, then an instance of the guessing principle $\clubsuit_{AD}$ holds at the … Continue reading

Posted in Squares and Diamonds, Topology | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Prolific Souslin trees

In a paper from 1971, Erdos and Hajnal asked whether (assuming CH) every coloring witnessing $\aleph_1\nrightarrow[\aleph_1]^2_3$ has a rainbow triangle. The negative solution was given in a 1975 paper by Shelah, and the proof and relevant definitions may be found … Continue reading

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Square principles

Since the birth of Jensen’s original Square principle, many variations of the principle were introduced and intensively studied. Asaf Karagila suggested me today to put some order into all of these principles. Here is a trial. Definition. A square principle … Continue reading

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Walk on countable ordinals: the characteristics

In this post, we shall present a few aspects of the method of walk on ordinals (focusing on countable ordinals), record its characteristics, and verify some of their properties. All definitions and results in this post are due to Todorcevic. … Continue reading

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The S-space problem, and the cardinal invariant $\mathfrak b$

Recall that an S-space is a regular hereditarily separable topological space which is not hereditarily Lindelöf. In a previous post, we showed that such a space exists after adding a Cohen real. Here, we shall construct one from an arithmetic … Continue reading

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Review: Stevo Todorcevic’s CRM-Fields-PIMS Prize Lecture

After winning the 2012 CRM-Fields-PIMS Prize, Stevo Todorcevic gave a series of talks on his research: at CRM, at PIMS and at the Fields Institute. The director of the Fields Institute asked me to write a short review on Stevo’s … Continue reading

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Rectangular square-bracket operation for successor of regular cardinals

Joint work with Stevo Todorcevic. Extended Abstract: Consider the coloring statement $\lambda^+\nrightarrow[\lambda^+;\lambda^+]^2_{\lambda^+}$ for a given regular cardinal $\lambda$: In 1990, Shelah proved the above for $\lambda>2^{\aleph_0}$; In 1991, Shelah proved the above for $\lambda>\aleph_1$; In 1997, Shelah proved the above … Continue reading

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Dushnik-Miller for regular cardinals (part 3)

Here is what we already know about the Dushnik-Miller theorem in the case of $\omega_1$ (given our earlier posts on the subject): $\omega_1\rightarrow(\omega_1,\omega+1)^2$ holds in ZFC; $\omega_1\rightarrow(\omega_1,\omega+2)^2$ may consistently fail; $\omega_1\rightarrow(\omega_1,\omega_1)^2$ fails in ZFC. In this post, we shall provide … Continue reading

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Dushnik-Miller for regular cardinals (part 2)

In this post, we shall provide a proof of Todorcevic’s theorem, that $\mathfrak b=\omega_1$ implies $\omega_1\not\rightarrow(\omega_1,\omega+2)^2$. This will show that the Erdos-Rado theorem that we discussed in an earlier post, is consistently optimal. Our exposition of Todorcevic’s theorem would be … Continue reading

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