Related papers: Guessing models and the approachability ideal
We introduce combinatorial principles that characterize strong compactness and supercompactness for inaccessible cardinals but also make sense for successor cardinals. Their consistency is established from what is supposedly optimal.…
We solve two long-standing open problems regarding the combinatorics of $\aleph_{\omega+1}$. We answer a question of Shelah by showing that it is consistent for any $n\geq 1$ that $\mathsf{GCH}$ holds and there is a stationary set of points…
We prove several results giving lower bounds for the large cardinal strength of a failure of the singular cardinal hypothesis. The main result is the following theorem: Theorem: Suppose $\kappa$ is a singular strong limit cardinal and…
We show that if the existence of a supercompact cardinal $\kappa$ with a weakly compact cardinal $\lambda$ above $\kappa$ is consistent, then the following are consistent as well (where $\mathfrak{t}(\kappa)$ and $\mathfrak{u}(\kappa)$ are…
In the context of quintessence, the concept of tracking solutions allows to address the fine-tuning and coincidence problems. When the field is on tracks today, one has $Q\approx m_{\rm Pl}$ demonstrating that, generically, any realistic…
Suppose that kappa is a singular cardinal of cofinality omega and GCH holds. Assume that for every n<omega the set of alphas with o(alpha)>= alpha^{+n} is unbounded in kappa.Then there is a cardinal preserving extension satisfying…
We discuss some well-known compactness principles for uncountable structures of small regular sizes ($\omega_n$ for $2 \le n<\omega$, $\aleph_{\omega+1}$, $\aleph_{\omega^2+1}$, etc.), consistent from weakly compact (the size-restricted…
We show that it is consistent from an inaccessible cardinal that classical Namba forcing has the weak $\omega_1$-approximation property. In fact, this is the case if $\aleph_1$-preserving forcings do not add cofinal branches to…
We identify a premouse inner model $L[\mathbb{E}]$, such that for any coarsely iterable background universe $R$ modelling $\mathrm{ZFC}$, $L[\mathbb{E}]^R$ is a proper class premouse of $R$ inheriting all strong and Woodin cardinals from…
We study a notion of potential isomorphism, where two structures are said to be potentially isomorphic if they are isomorphic in some generic extension that preserves stationary sets and does not add new sets of cardinality less than the…
Recently the second author introduced combinatorial principles that characterize supercompactness for inaccessible cardinals but can also hold true for small cardinals. We prove that the proper forcing axiom PFA implies these principles…
For many classes of models, there are universal members in any cardinal $\lambda$ which "essentially satisfies GCH", i.e. $\lambda = 2^{< \lambda}$, in particular for the class of a complete first order $T$ (well, if at least $\lambda >…
Assuming that $GCH$ holds and $\kappa$ is $\kappa^{+3}$-supercompact, we construct a generic extension $W$ of $V$ in which $\kappa$ remains strongly inaccessible and $(\alpha^+)^{HOD} < \alpha^+$ for every infinite cardinal $\alpha <…
We give Woodin's original proof that if there exists a $(\kappa+2)-$strong cardinal $\kappa,$ then there is a generic extension of the universe in which $\kappa=\aleph_\omega,$ $GCH$ holds below $\aleph_\omega$ and…
The paper settles the problem of the consistency of the existence of a single universal graph between a strong limit singular and its power. Assuming that in a model of $\mathbf{GCH}$ $\kappa$ is supercompact and the cardinals $\theta <…
Motivated by two open questions about two-cardinal tree properties, we introduce and study generalized narrow system properties. The first of these questions asks whether the strong tree property at a regular cardinal $\kappa \geq \omega_2$…
Relative to class many supercompact cardinals, we construct a model of $\ZFC+\GCH$ where for every singular cardinal $\delta$ of countable cofinality and every regular uncountable $\mu<\delta$ there are stationarily many non-approachable…
It is shown that the existence of a measurable cardinal is equiconsistent to a model of ZFC in which there is no ordinal-definable, stationary, costationary subset of $\omega_1$
Let $\kappa$,$\lambda$ be regular uncountable cardinals such that $\lambda > \kappa^+$ is not a successor of a singular cardinal of low cofinality. We construct a generic extension with $s(\kappa) = \lambda$ starting from a ground model in…
The additivity spectrum ADD(I) of an ideal I is the set of all regular cardinals kappa such that there is an increasing chain {A_alpha:alpha<kappa\} in the ideal I such that the union of the chain is not in I. We investigate which set A of…