English

Shelah's eventual categoricity conjecture in universal classes. Part II

Logic 2017-03-28 v3

Abstract

We prove that a universal class categorical in a high-enough cardinal is categorical on a tail of cardinals. As opposed to other results in the literature, we work in ZFC, do not require the categoricity cardinal to be a successor, do not assume amalgamation, and do not use large cardinals. Moreover we give an explicit bound on the "high-enough" threshold: Theorem\mathbf{Theorem} Let ψ\psi be a universal Lω1,ω\mathbb{L}_{\omega_1, \omega} sentence. If ψ\psi is categorical in some λω1\lambda \ge \beth_{\beth_{\omega_1}}, then ψ\psi is categorical in all λω1\lambda' \ge \beth_{\beth_{\omega_1}}. As a byproduct of the proof, we show that a conjecture of Grossberg holds in universal classes: Corollary\mathbf{Corollary} Let ψ\psi be a universal Lω1,ω\mathbb{L}_{\omega_1, \omega} sentence that is categorical in some λω1\lambda \ge \beth_{\beth_{\omega_1}}, then the class of models of ψ\psi has the amalgamation property for models of size at least ω1\beth_{\beth_{\omega_1}}. We also establish generalizations of these two results to uncountable languages. As part of the argument, we develop machinery to transfer model-theoretic properties between two different classes satisfying a compatibility condition. This is used as a bridge between Shelah's milestone study of universal classes (which we use extensively) and a categoricity transfer theorem of the author for abstract elementary classes that have amalgamation, are tame, and have primes over sets of the form M{a}M \cup \{a\}.

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Cite

@article{arxiv.1602.02633,
  title  = {Shelah's eventual categoricity conjecture in universal classes. Part II},
  author = {Sebastien Vasey},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1602.02633},
  year   = {2017}
}

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49 pages