English

Long Borel Hierarchies

Logic 2007-05-23 v1

Abstract

We show that it is relatively consistent with ZF that the Borel hierarchy on the reals has length ω2\omega_2. This implies that ω1\omega_1 has countable cofinality, so the axiom of choice fails very badly in our model. A similar argument produces models of ZF in which the Borel hierarchy has length any given limit ordinal less than ω2\omega_2, e.g., ω\omega or ω1+ω1\omega_1+\omega_1. Latex2e: 24 pages plus 8 page appendix Latest version at: www.math.wisc.edu/~miller

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0704.3998,
  title  = {Long Borel Hierarchies},
  author = {Arnold W. Miller},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0704.3998},
  year   = {2007}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-21T08:23:36.652Z