# Large cardinal indestructibility: two slick new proofs of prior results

$\newcommand\HOD{\text{HOD}}$

I’ve recently found two slick new proofs of some of my prior results on indestructibility, using the idea of an observation of Arthur Apter’s.  What he had noted is:

Observation. (Apter [1])  If $\kappa$ is a Laver indestructible supercompact cardinal, then $V_\kappa\subset\HOD$.  Indeed, $V_\kappa$ satisfies the continuum coding axiom CCA.

Proof. The continuum coding axiom asserts that every set of ordinals is coded into the GCH pattern (it follows that they are each coded unboundedly often). If $x\subset\kappa$ is any bounded set of ordinals, then let $\mathbb{Q}$ be the forcing to code $x$ into the GCH pattern at regular cardinals directly above $\kappa$. This forcing is ${\lt}\kappa$-directed closed, and so by our assumption, $\kappa$ remains supercompact and in particular $\Sigma_2$-reflecting in the extension $V[G]$. Since $x$ is coded into the GCH pattern of $V[G]$, it follows by reflection that $V_\kappa=V[G]_\kappa$ must also think that $x$ is coded, and so $V_\kappa\models\text{CCA}$. QED

First, what I noticed is that this immediately implies that small forcing ruins indestructibility:

Theorem. (Hamkins, Shelah [2], Hamkins [3]) After any nontrivial forcing of size less than $\kappa$, the cardinal $\kappa$ is no longer indestructibly supercompact, nor even indestructibly $\Sigma_2$-reflecting.

Proof.  Nontrivial small forcing $V[g]$ will add a new set of ordinals below $\kappa$, which will not be coded unboundedly often into the continuum function of $V[g]$, and so $V[g]_\kappa$ will not satisfy the CCA.  Hence, $\kappa$ will not be indestructibly $\Sigma_2$-reflecting there. QED

This argument can be seen as essentially related to Shelah’s 1998 argument, given in [2].

Second, I also noticed that a similar idea can be used to prove:

Theorem. (Bagaria, Hamkins, Tsaprounis, Usuba [4])  Superstrong and other large cardinals are never Laver indestructible.

Proof.  Suppose the superstrongness of $\kappa$ is indestructible. It follows by the observation that $V_\kappa$ satisfies the continuum coding axiom. Now force to add a $V$-generic Cohen subset $G\subset\kappa$.  If $\kappa$ were superstrong in $V[G]$, then there would be $j:V[G]\to M$ with $V[G]_{j(\kappa)}=M_{j(\kappa)}$. Since $G$ is not coded into the continuum function, $M_{j(\kappa)}$ does not satisfy the CCA.  This contradicts the elementarity $V_\kappa=V[G]_\kappa\prec M_{j(\kappa)}$. QED

The argument shows that even the $\Sigma_3$-extendibility of $\kappa$ is never Laver indestructible.

I would note, however, that the slick proof does not achieve the stronger result of [4], which is that superstrongness is never indestructible even by $\text{Add}(\kappa,1)$, and that after forcing to add a Cohen subset to $\kappa$ (among any of many other common forcing notions), the cardinal $\kappa$ is never $\Sigma_3$-extendible (and hence not superstrong, not weakly superstrong, and so on).  The slick proof above uses indestructibility by the coding forcing to get the CCA in $V_\kappa$, and it is not clear how one would argue that way to get these stronger results of [4].

[1] Arthur W. Apter and Shoshana Friedman. HOD-supercompactness, inestructibility, and level-by-level equivalence, to appear in Bulletin of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Mathematics).

[2] Joel David Hamkins, Saharon Shelah, Superdestructibility: A Dual to Laver’s Indestructibility,  J. Symbolic Logic, Volume 63, Issue 2 (1998), 549-554.

[3] Joel David Hamkins, Small forcing makes any cardinal superdestructible, J. Symbolic Logic, 63 (1998).

[4] Joan Bagaria, Joel David Hamkins, Konstantinos Tsaprounis, Toshimichi Usuba, Superstrong and other large cardinals are never Laver indestructible, to appear in the Archive of Math Logic (special issue in memory of Richard Laver).

# Superstrong and other large cardinals are never Laver indestructible, ASL 2014, Boulder, May 2014

This will be an invited talk at the ASL 2014 North American Annual Meeting (May 19-22, 2014) in the special session Set Theory in Honor of Rich Laver, organized by Bill Mitchell and Jean Larson.

Abstract.  The large cardinal indestructibility phenomenon, discovered by Richard Laver with his seminal result on supercompact cardinals, is by now often seen as pervasive in the large cardinal hierarchy. Nevertheless, a new never-indestrucible phenomenon has emerged.  Superstrong cardinals, for example, are never Laver indestructible.  Similarly, almost huge cardinals, huge cardinals, superhuge cardinals, rank-into-rank cardinals, extendible cardinals, 1-extendible cardinals, 0-extendible cardinals, weakly superstrong cardinals, uplifting cardinals, pseudo-uplifting cardinals, superstrongly unfoldable cardinals, $\Sigma_n$-reflecting cardinals, $\Sigma_n$-correct cardinals and $\Sigma_n$-extendible cardinals (all for $n\geq 3$) are never Laver indestructible.  The proof involves a detailed technical analysis of the complexity of the definition in Laver’s theorem on the definability of the ground model, thereby involving and extending results in set-theoretic geology.  This is joint work between myself and Joan Bagaria, Kostas Tasprounis and Toshimichi Usuba.

# Superstrong and other large cardinals are never Laver indestructible

• J. Bagaria, J. D. Hamkins, K. Tsaprounis, and T. Usuba, “Superstrong and other large cardinals are never Laver indestructible,” to appear in Archive for Mathematical Logic (special issue in honor of Richard Laver).
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Abstract.  Superstrong cardinals are never Laver indestructible. Similarly, almost huge cardinals, huge cardinals, superhuge cardinals, rank-into-rank cardinals, extendible cardinals, $1$-extendible cardinals, $0$-extendible cardinals, weakly superstrong cardinals, uplifting cardinals, pseudo-uplifting cardinals, superstrongly unfoldable cardinals, $\Sigma_n$-reflecting cardinals, $\Sigma_n$-correct cardinals and $\Sigma_n$-extendible cardinals (all for $n\geq 3$) are never Laver indestructible. In fact, all these large cardinal properties are superdestructible: if $\kappa$ exhibits any of them, with corresponding target $\theta$, then in any forcing extension arising from nontrivial strategically ${\lt}\kappa$-closed forcing $\mathbb{Q}\in V_\theta$, the cardinal $\kappa$ will exhibit none of the large cardinal properties with target $\theta$ or larger.

The large cardinal indestructibility phenomenon, occurring when certain preparatory forcing makes a given large cardinal become necessarily preserved by any subsequent forcing from a large class of forcing notions, is pervasive in the large cardinal hierarchy. The phenomenon arose in Laver’s seminal result that any supercompact cardinal $\kappa$ can be made indestructible by ${\lt}\kappa$-directed closed forcing. It continued with the Gitik-Shelah treatment of strong cardinals; the universal indestructibility of Apter and myself, which produced simultaneous indestructibility for all weakly compact, measurable, strongly compact, supercompact cardinals and others; the lottery preparation, which applies generally to diverse large cardinals; work of Apter, Gitik and Sargsyan on indestructibility and the large-cardinal identity crises; the indestructibility of strongly unfoldable cardinals; the indestructibility of Vopenka’s principle; and diverse other treatments of large cardinal indestructibility. Based on these results, one might be tempted to the general conclusion that all the usual large cardinals can be made indestructible.

In this article, my co-authors and I temper that temptation by proving that certain kinds of large cardinals cannot be made nontrivially indestructible. Superstrong cardinals, we prove, are never Laver indestructible. Consequently, neither are almost huge cardinals, huge cardinals, superhuge cardinals, rank-into-rank cardinals, extendible cardinals and $1$-extendible cardinals, to name a few. Even the $0$-extendible cardinals are never indestructible, and neither are weakly superstrong cardinals, uplifting cardinals, pseudo-uplifting cardinals, strongly uplifting cardinals, superstrongly unfoldable cardinals, $\Sigma_n$-reflecting cardinals, $\Sigma_n$-correct cardinals and $\Sigma_n$-extendible cardinals, when $n\geq 3$. In fact, all these large cardinal properties are superdestructible, in the sense that if $\kappa$ exhibits any of them, with corresponding target $\theta$, then in any forcing extension arising from nontrivial strategically ${\lt}\kappa$-closed forcing $\mathbb{Q}\in V_\theta$, the cardinal $\kappa$ will exhibit none of the large cardinal properties with target $\theta$ or larger. Many quite ordinary forcing notions, which one might otherwise have expected to fall under the scope of an indestructibility result, will definitely ruin all these large cardinal properties. For example, adding a Cohen subset to any cardinal $\kappa$ will definitely prevent it from being superstrong—as well as preventing it from being uplifting, $\Sigma_3$-correct, $\Sigma_3$-extendible and so on with all the large cardinal properties mentioned above—in the forcing extension.

Main Theorem.

1. Superstrong cardinals are never Laver indestructible.
2. Consequently, almost huge, huge, superhuge and rank-into-rank cardinals are never Laver indestructible.
3. Similarly, extendible cardinals, $1$-extendible and even $0$-extendible cardinals are never Laver indestructible.
4. Uplifting cardinals, pseudo-uplifting cardinals, weakly superstrong cardinals, superstrongly unfoldable cardinals and strongly uplifting cardinals are never Laver indestructible.
5. $\Sigma_n$-reflecting and indeed $\Sigma_n$-correct cardinals, for each finite $n\geq 3$, are never Laver indestructible.
6. Indeed—the strongest result here, because it is the weakest notion—$\Sigma_3$-extendible cardinals are never Laver indestructible.

In fact, each of these large cardinal properties is superdestructible. Namely, if $\kappa$ exhibits any of them, with corresponding target $\theta$, then in any forcing extension arising from nontrivial strategically ${\lt}\kappa$-closed forcing $\mathbb{Q}\in V_\theta$, the cardinal $\kappa$ will exhibit none of the mentioned large cardinal properties with target $\theta$ or larger.

The proof makes use of a detailed analysis of the complexity of the definition of the ground model in the forcing extension.  These results are, to my knowledge, the first applications of the ideas of set-theoretic geology not making direct references to set-theoretically geological concerns.

Theorem 10 in the article answers (the main case of) a question I had posed on MathOverflow, namely, Can a model of set theory be realized as a Cohen-subset forcing extension in two different ways, with different grounds and different cardinals?  I had been specifically interested there to know whether a cardinal $\kappa$ necessarily becomes definable after adding a Cohen subset to it, and theorem 10 shows indeed that it does:  after adding a Cohen subset to a cardinal, it becomes $\Sigma_3$-definable in the extension, and this fact can be seen as explaining the main theorem above.

# Superstrong cardinals are never Laver indestructible, and neither are extendible, almost huge and rank-into-rank cardinals, CUNY, January 2013

This is a talk for the CUNY Set Theory Seminar on February 1, 2013, 10:00 am.

Abstract.  Although the large cardinal indestructibility phenomenon, initiated with Laver’s seminal 1978 result that any supercompact cardinal $\kappa$ can be made indestructible by $\lt\kappa$-directed closed forcing and continued with the Gitik-Shelah treatment of strong cardinals, is by now nearly pervasive in set theory, nevertheless I shall show that no superstrong strong cardinal—and hence also no $1$-extendible cardinal, no almost huge cardinal and no rank-into-rank cardinal—can be made indestructible, even by comparatively mild forcing: all such cardinals $\kappa$ are destroyed by $\text{Add}(\kappa,1)$, by $\text{Add}(\kappa,\kappa^+)$, by $\text{Add}(\kappa^+,1)$ and by many other commonly considered forcing notions.

This is very recent joint work with Konstantinos Tsaprounis and Joan Bagaria.