English

Conjugating trivial automorphisms of $\mathcal P(\mathbb N)/\mathrm{Fin}$

Logic 2025-06-23 v3 Dynamical Systems General Topology Operator Algebras

Abstract

A trivial automorphism of the Boolean algebra P(N)/Fin\mathcal P(\mathbb N) / \mathrm{Fin} is an automorphism induced by the action of some function NN\mathbb N \rightarrow \mathbb N. In models of forcing axioms all automorphisms are trivial, and therefore two trivial automorphisms are conjugate if and only if they have the same (modulo finite) cycle structure. We show that the Continuum Hypothesis implies that two trivial automorphisms are conjugate if and only if there are neither first-order obstructions nor index obstructions for their conjugacy. This is equivalent to given trivial automorphisms being conugate in some forcing extension of the universe. To each automorphism α\alpha of P(N)/Fin\mathcal P(\mathbb N) / \mathrm{Fin} we associate the first-order structure Aα=(P(N)/Fin,α)\mathfrak{A}_\alpha=(\mathcal P(\mathbb N) / \mathrm{Fin},\alpha) and compute the existential theories of these structures. These results are applied to resolve a question of Braga, Farah, and Vignati and prove that there are coarse metric spaces XX and YY such that the isomorphism between their uniform Roe coronas is independent from ZFC\mathsf{ZFC}.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2410.08789,
  title  = {Conjugating trivial automorphisms of $\mathcal P(\mathbb N)/\mathrm{Fin}$},
  author = {Will Brian and Ilijas Farah},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2410.08789},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

Minor touches, somewhat less minor in sections 4 and 6. 36 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-28T19:17:47.956Z