Boldface resurrection and the strongly uplifting cardinals, the superstrongly unfoldable cardinals and the almost-hugely unfoldable cardinals, BEST 2014

I will speak at the BEST conference, which is held as a symposium in the much larger 95th Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, at the University of California at Riverside, June 18-20, 2014.

This talk will be for specialists in the BEST symposium.

Abstract.  I shall introduce several new large cardinal concepts, namely, the strongly uplifting cardinals, the superstrongly unfoldable cardinals and the almost-hugely unfoldable cardinals, and prove their tight connection with one another — actually, they are equivalent! — as well as their equiconsistency with several natural instances of the boldface resurrection axiom, such as the boldface resurrection axiom for proper forcing.  This is joint work with Thomas A. Johnstone.

I am also scheduled to give a plenary General Pubic Lecture, entitled Higher infinity and the foundations of mathematics, as a part of the larger AAAS program, to which the general public is invited.

Slides | Article | Program | AAAS General Public Lecture

Strongly uplifting cardinals and the boldface resurrection axioms

[bibtex key=HamkinsJohnstone2017:StronglyUpliftingCardinalsAndBoldfaceResurrection]

Abstract. We introduce the strongly uplifting cardinals, which are equivalently characterized, we prove, as the superstrongly unfoldable cardinals and also as the almost hugely unfoldable cardinals, and we show that their existence is equiconsistent over ZFC with natural instances of the boldface resurrection axiom, such as the boldface resurrection axiom for proper forcing.

The strongly uplifting cardinals, which we introduce in this article, are a boldface analogue of the uplifting cardinals introduced in our previous paper, Resurrection axioms and uplifting cardinals, and are equivalently characterized as the superstrongly unfoldable cardinals and also as the almost hugely unfoldable cardinals. In consistency strength, these new large cardinals lie strictly above the weakly compact, totally indescribable and strongly unfoldable cardinals and strictly below the subtle cardinals, which in turn are weaker in consistency than the existence of $0^\sharp$. The robust diversity of equivalent characterizations of this new large cardinal concept enables constructions and techniques from much larger large cardinal contexts, such as Laver functions and forcing iterations with applications to forcing axioms. Using such methods, we prove that the existence of a strongly uplifting cardinal (or equivalently, a superstrongly unfoldable or almost hugely unfoldable cardinal) is equiconsistent over ZFC with natural instances of the boldface resurrection axioms, including the boldface resurrection axiom for proper forcing, for semi-proper forcing, for c.c.c. forcing and others. Thus, whereas in our prior article we proved that the existence of a mere uplifting cardinal is equiconsistent with natural instances of the (lightface) resurrection axioms, here we adapt both of these notions to the boldface context.

Definitions.

  • An inaccessible cardinal $\kappa$ is strongly uplifting if for every ordinal $\theta$ it is strongly $\theta$-uplifting, which is to say that for every $A\subset V_\kappa$ there is an inaccessible cardinal $\gamma\geq\theta$ and a set $A^*\subset V_\gamma$ such that $\langle V_\kappa,{\in},A\rangle\prec\langle V_\gamma,{\in},A^*\rangle$ is a proper elementary extension.
  • A cardinal $\kappa$ is superstrongly unfoldable, if for every ordinal $\theta$ it is superstrongly $\theta$-unfoldable, which is to say that for each $A\in H_{\kappa^+}$ there is a $\kappa$-model $M$ with $A\in M$ and a transitive set $N$ with an elementary embedding $j:M\to N$ with critical point $\kappa$ and $j(\kappa)\geq\theta$ and $V_{j(\kappa)}\subset N$.
  • A cardinal $\kappa$ is almost-hugely unfoldable, if for every ordinal $\theta$ it is almost-hugely $\theta$-unfoldable, which is to say that for each $A\in H_{\kappa^+}$ there is a $\kappa$-model $M$ with $A\in M$ and a transitive set $N$ with an elementary embedding $j:M\to N$ with critical point $\kappa$ and $j(\kappa)\geq\theta$ and $N^{<j(\kappa)}\subset N$.

Remarkably, these different-seeming large cardinal concepts turn out to be exactly equivalent to one another. A cardinal $\kappa$ is strongly uplifting if and only if it is superstrongly unfoldable, if and only if it is almost hugely unfoldable. Furthermore, we prove that the existence of such a cardinal is equiconsistent with several natural instances of the boldface resurrection axiom.

Theorem. The following theories are equiconsistent over ZFC.

  • There is a strongly uplifting cardinal.
  • There is a superstrongly unfoldable cardinal.
  • There is an almost hugely unfoldable cardinal.
  • The boldface resurrection axiom for all forcing.
  • The boldface resurrection axiom for proper forcing.
  • The boldface resurrection axiom for semi-proper forcing.
  • The boldface resurrection axiom for c.c.c. forcing.
  • The weak boldface resurrection axiom for countably-closed forcing, axiom-A forcing, proper forcing and semi-proper forcing, plus $\neg\text{CH}$.