English

Mad families of Gowers' infinite block sequences

Logic 2025-03-19 v4 Combinatorics

Abstract

Call a subset of FINk\mathbf{FIN}_k small if it does not contain a copy of A\langle{A\rangle} for some infinite block sequence AFINk[]A \in \mathbf{FIN}_k^{[\infty]}. Gowers' FINk\mathbf{FIN}_k theorem asserts that the set of small subsets of FINk\mathbf{FIN}_k forms an ideal, so it is sensible to consider almost disjoint families of FINk\mathbf{FIN}_k with respect to the ideal of small subsets of FINk\mathbf{FIN}_k. We shall show that aFINk\mathfrak{a}_{\mathbf{FIN}_k}, the smallest possible cardinality of an infinite mad family of FINk\mathbf{FIN}_k, is uncountable.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2402.07836,
  title  = {Mad families of Gowers' infinite block sequences},
  author = {Clement Yung},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2402.07836},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

9 pages. 18 Mar 25: This version provides a more streamlined proof of Theorem 1.1