English

A Ramsey theorem for the reals

Logic 2024-05-29 v1 Combinatorics General Topology

Abstract

We prove that for every colouring of pairs of reals with finitely-many colours, there is a set homeomorphic to the rationals which takes no more than two colours. This was conjectured by Galvin in 1970, and a colouring of Sierpi{\'n}ski from 1933 witnesses that the number of colours cannot be reduced to one. Previously in 1985 Shelah had shown that a stronger statement is consistent with a forcing construction assuming the existence of large cardinals. Then in 2018 Raghavan and Todor\v{c}evi\'c had proved it assuming the existence of large cardinals. We prove it in ZFCZFC. In fact Raghavan and Todor\v{c}evi\'c proved, assuming more large cardinals, a similar result for a large class of topological spaces. We prove this also, again in ZFCZFC.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2405.18431,
  title  = {A Ramsey theorem for the reals},
  author = {Tanmay Inamdar},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2405.18431},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

Preliminary version

R2 v1 2026-06-28T16:44:29.872Z