We prove that there are groups in the constructible universe whose automorphism towers are highly malleable by forcing. This is a consequence of the fact that, under a suitable diamond hypothesis, there are sufficiently many highly rigid non-isomorphic Souslin trees whose isomorphism relation can be precisely controlled by forcing.
An $\aleph_1$-Souslin tree is a complicated combinatorial object whose existence cannot be decided on the grounds of ZFC alone. But 15 years after Tennenbaum and independently Jech devised notions of forcing for introducing such a tree, Shelah proved that already the simplest forcing notion --- Cohen forcing --- adds an $\aleph_1$-Souslin tree. In this paper, we identify a rather large class of notions of forcing that, assuming a GCH-type assumption, add a $λ^+$-Souslin tree. This class includes Prikry, Magidor and Radin forcing.
We investigate various strong notions of rigidity for Souslin trees, separating them under Diamond into a hierarchy. Applying our methods to the automorphism tower problem in group theory, we show under Diamond that there is a group whose automorphism tower is highly malleable by forcing.
We derive a forcing axiom from the conjunction of square and diamond, and present a few applications, primary among them being the existence of super-Souslin trees. It follows that for every uncountable cardinal $λ$, if $λ^{++}$ is not a Mahlo cardinal in Gödel's constructible universe, then $2^λ= λ^+$ entails the existence of a $λ^+$-complete $λ^{++}$-Souslin tree.
We describe a method of building ``nice'' sigma-ideals from Souslin ccc forcing notions. [These notes were written down in 1992, but were not submitted to any journal. In a slightly modified form, they were incorporated to: T. Bartoszynski and H. Judah, Set Theory: on the structure of the real line, A K Peters, Wellesley, MA, 1995; pages 193-203.]
We show that many countable support iterations of proper forcings preserve Souslin trees. We establish sufficient conditions in terms of games and we draw connections to other preservation properties. We present a proof of preservation properties in countable support interations in the so-called Case A that does not need a division into forcings that add reals and those who do not.
We show how to force, with finite conditions, the forcing axiom PFA(T), a relativization of PFA to proper forcing notions preserving a given Souslin tree T. The proof uses a Neeman style iteration with generalized side conditions consisting of models of two types, and a preservation theorem for such iterations. The consistency of this axiom was previously known by the standard countable support iteration, using a preservation theorem due to Miyamoto.
It is consistent that there exists a Souslin tree $T$ such that after forcing with it, $T$ becomes an almost Souslin Kurepa tree. This answers a question of Zakrzewski.
We analyze the forcing notion $\mathcal P$ of finite matrices whose rows consists of isomorphic countable elementary submodels of a given structure of the form $H_θ$. We show that forcing with this poset adds a Kurepa tree $T$. Moreover, if $\mathcal P_c$ is a suborder of $\mathcal P$ containing only continuous matrices, then the Kurepa tree $T$ is almost Souslin, i.e. the level set of any antichain in $T$ is not stationary in $ω_1$.
Boban Velickovic asked the following question: Is there a nontrivial forcing notion with the Sacks property which is also ccc? A ``definable'' variant of this question has been answered in [Sh:480] (math.LO/9303208): Every nontrivial Souslin forcing notion which has the Sacks property has an uncountable antichain. Here we show that it is consistent that every nontrivial forcing notion which has the Sacks property has an uncountable antichain. Independently, Velickovic has also proved the consistency of this statement.
We show if we use countable support iteration of forcing notions not adding reals that satisfy additional conditions, then the limit forcing does not add reals. As a result we prove that we can amalgamate two earlier methods and prove the consistency with ZFC + GCH of two statements gotten separately earlier: Souslin hypothesis and non-club guessing. We also answer a question of Justin Moore by proving the consistency of one further case of "strong failure of club guessing" with GCH.
There are several examples in the literature showing that compactness-like properties of a cardinal $κ$ cause poor behavior of some generic ultrapowers which have critical point $κ$ (Burke \cite{MR1472122} when $κ$ is a supercompact cardinal; Foreman-Magidor \cite{MR1359154} when $κ= ω_2$ in the presence of strong forcing axioms). We prove more instances of this phenomenon. First, the Reflection Principle (RP) implies that if $\vec{\mathcal{I}}$ is a tower of ideals which concentrates on the class $GIC_{ω_1}$ of $ω_1$-guessing, internally club sets, then $\vec{\mathcal{I}}$ is not presaturated…
The automorphism tower of a group is obtained by computing its automorphism group, the automorphism group of THAT group and so on, iterating transfinitely. Each group maps into the next using inner automorphisms and one takes a direct limit at limit stages. The question is whether the process ever terminates in a fixed point, a group which is isomorphic to its automorphism group by the natural map. In this talk I will prove that every group has a terminating automorphism tower. After this, I will discuss the set-theoretic aspects of the height of the automorphism tower of a group, and sketch m…
If $G$ is a centreless group, then $τ(G)$ denotes the height of the automorphism tower of $G$. We prove that it is consistent that for every cardinal $λ$ and every ordinal $α< λ$, there exists a centreless group $G$ such that (a) $τ(G) = α$; and (b) if $β$ is any ordinal such that $1 \leq β< λ$, then there exists a notion of forcing $P$, which preserves cofinalities and cardinalities, such that $τ(G) = β$ in the corresponding generic extension $V^{P}$.
We present several results relating the general theory of the stationary tower forcing developed by Woodin with forcing axioms. The main results is that the forcing axiom MM^{++} (also known as MM^{+ω_1}) decides the Π_2-theory of H_{ω_2} with respect to stationary set preserving forcings. We argue that this is a close to optimal generalization to H_{ω_2} of Woodin's absoluteness results for L(R).
We prove that the theory of the models constructible using finitely many cofinality quantifiers - $C_{λ_{1},...,λ_{n}}^{*}$ and $C_{<λ_{1},...,<λ_{n}}^{*}$ for $λ_{1},...,λ_{n}$ regular cardinals - is set-forcing absolute under the assumption of class many Woodin cardinals, and is independent of the regular cardinals used. Towards this goal we prove some properties of the generic embedding induced from the stationary tower restricted to $<μ$-closed sets.