English

Good Scales and Non-Compactness of Squares

Logic 2026-03-17 v4

Abstract

Cummings, Foreman, and Magidor investigated the extent to which square principles are compact at singular cardinals. The first author proved that if κ\kappa is a singular strong limit of uncountable cofinality, all scales on κ\kappa are good, and δ\square^*_\delta holds for all δ<κ\delta<\kappa, then κ\square_\kappa^* holds. In this paper we will present a strongly contrasting result for ω\aleph_\omega. We construct a model in which n\square_{\aleph_n} holds for all n<ωn<\omega, all scales on ω\aleph_\omega are good, but in which ω\square_{\aleph_\omega}^* fails and some weak forms of internal approachability for [H(ω+1)]1[H(\aleph_{\omega+1})]^{\aleph_1} fail. This requires an extensive analysis of the dominating and approximation properties of a version of Namba forcing. We also prove some supporting results.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2412.16071,
  title  = {Good Scales and Non-Compactness of Squares},
  author = {Maxwell Levine and Heike Mildenberger},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.16071},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

Tentative update submitted in September 2025