3. The Galvin-Hajnal theorems.
In this section I want to present two theorems of Galvin and Hajnal that greatly generalize Silver’s theorem. I focus on a “pointwise” (or everywhere) result, that gives us information beyond the pointwise theorems from last lecture, like Corollary 23. Then I state a result where the hypotheses, as in Silver’s theorem, are required to hold stationarily rather than everywhere. From this result, the full version of Silver’s result can be recovered.
Both results appear in the paper Fred Galvin, András Hajnal, Inequalities for Cardinal Powers, The Annals of Mathematics, Second Series, 101 (3), (May, 1975), 491–498, available from JSTOR, that I will follow closely. For the notion of -inaccessibility, see Definition II.2.20 from last lecture.
Theorem 1. Let be uncountable regular cardinals, and suppose that
is
-inaccessible. Let
be a sequence of cardinals such that
for all
Then also
The second theorem will be stated next lecture. Theorem 1 is a rather general result; here are some corollaries that illustrate its reach:
Corollary 2. Suppose that are uncountable regular cardinals, and that
is
-inaccessible. Let
be a cardinal, and suppose that
for all cardinals
Then also
Proof. Apply Theorem 1 with for all
Corollary 3. Suppose that are uncountable regular cardinals, and that
is
-inaccessible. Let
be a cardinal of cofinality
and suppose that
for all cardinals
Then also
Proof. Let be a sequence of cardinals smaller than
such that
and set
for all
Then
for all
by assumption. By Theorem 1,
as well.
Corollary 4. Let be cardinals, with
and
regular and uncountable. Suppose that
for all cardinals
Then also
Proof. This follows directly from Corollary 2, since is regular and
-inaccessible.
Corollary 5. Let be cardinals, with
and
of uncountable cofinality
Suppose that
for all cardinals
Then also
Proof. This follows directly from Corollary 3 with
Corollary 6. Let be an ordinal of uncountable cofinality, and suppose that
for all
Then also
Proof. This follows from Corollary 5 with
and
Corollary 7. Let be an ordinal of uncountable cofinality, and suppose that
for all cardinals
and all
Then also
Proof. This follows from Corollary 4: If , then
by Theorem II.1.10 from lecture II.2. But
so both
and
are strictly smaller than
Corollary 8. If for all
then also
Proof. By Corollary 5.
Corollary 9. If for all
then also
Proof. By Corollary 7.
Notice that, as general as these results are, they do not provide us with a bound for the size of for
the first cardinal of uncountable cofinality that is a fixed point of the aleph sequence,
not even under the assumption that
is a strong limit cardinal.
Now I proceed to the proof of Theorem 1.
Definition 10. Let be a cardinal and let
be a sequence of nonempty sets. A set
is an almost disjoint transversal system (a.d.t.) for
iff
whenever
As in the proof of Silver’s theorem, Theorem 1 follows from an analysis of the possible sizes of a.d.t.s for a particular sequence
Theorem 11. Let be uncountable regular cardinals, and suppose that
is
-inaccessible. Let
be a sequence of nonempty sets such that
for all
Let
be an a.d.t. for
Then
Before proving Theorem 11, I show how it implies Theorem 1:
Lemma 12. Let be a cardinal and let
be a sequence of cardinals. For
let
be the set product
and set
Then there is an a.d.t.
for
with
Proof of Theorem 1. Let
and
be as in the statement of Theorem 1. Let
where
for all
By Lemma 12 there is an a.d.t.
for
of size
By assumption,
for all
and it follows from Theorem 11 that
as well.
Proof of Lemma 12. Let be the cardinal
Consider an injective enumeration
of the set product
For
let
be given by
for all
Clearly,
implies that
is an ordinal below
namely, the least
such that
It follows that
is an a.d.t. for
All that remains is to show Theorem 11.
Proof. The argument is organized as an induction. For this, we need a rank on which to induct.
Definition 13. Let be a cardinal. Let
be the partial ordering on
given by
iff
(The subindex
stands for “bounded.”)
Lemma 14. If is a regular, uncountable cardinal, then
is well-founded.
The result is fairly general. For example, instead of the ideal of bounded sets, we could have used the ideal of nonstationary sets in Definition 13 (i.e., requiring that for club many values of
), and Lemma 14 would still hold; all we need is a
-complete ideal. Below I follow the usual convention that a
-complete ideal means one closed under unions of any length less that
Proof. Let be the filter of cobounded subsets of
Notice that
is
-complete, by regularity of
In particular,
is indeed a partial order: If
and
then
because
contains the intersection of two sets in
so it is also in
To prove well-foundedness, consider a -decreasing sequence
and let
so
for all
But then
In particular,
If
then
and
is a decreasing sequence of ordinals, contradiction.
Whenever we are given a well-founded partial order on a set we can assign a rank (an ordinal) to the elements of
as follows:
Definition 15. Let be well-founded. The rank
of a set
is defined by transfinite recursion as
It follows from standard arguments that, in the situation of Definition 15, is well-defined. For example, considering some
for which
is not defined (or unbounded), it follows that for some
either
is not defined or it is also unbounded. This easily gives us a strictly
-decreasing sequence of members of
contradicting that
is well-founded. It is immediate from the definition that if
then
Definition 16. Given a cardinal and a sequence
of nonempty sets, let
Clearly,
for
i.e.,
only depends on the cardinalities of the terms of the sequence
- (Monotonicity). If
and
are sequences of nonempty sets with
for all
then
For let
be
where
By monotonicity, Theorem 11 will follow if I can show that
for all
since if
is finite for some
one can just replace it with
It is this reformulation that is proved by induction on the
-rank of
We argue by contradiction: Assume the claim above fails, and let be a counterexample of least
rank. It is our goal to show that there must be another counterexample of strictly smaller rank. For this, consider the following set:
All we need from Lemma 17 below is that is a nontrivial proper ideal (i.e., it is closed under finite unions, does not contain
and contains the bounded sets), but proving
-completeness requires about the same amount of work.
Lemma 17. is a nontrivial
-complete proper ideal on
Proof. We prove this in four steps.
- Clearly,
is
-downward closed.
Suppose as witnessed by
so
and for all
or
By -minimality of
has size
If is an a.d.t. for
then for
we have that
is bounded, so for
many values of
and they are finite! Let
be a subset of
of size
The number of functions from
to
is
and there are at most
many such sets
so the number of elements of
is at most
and
contradiction.
It follows that i.e.,
is proper.
- If
is bounded, then
For bounded, let
be given by
if
and
otherwise.
I claim that witnesses that
Since
it suffices to show that
Let be an a.d.t. for
and define
as
where
so
and
is injective since
is bounded and
for all but boundedly many values of
Thus,
is an a.d.t. for
and it follows that
- It remains to argue that
is closed under unions of fewer than
sets.
For this, let be sets in
for
where
as witnessed by functions
Let
Let
be given by
for
Let We argue that there is an a.d.t.
for
of size at least
Since this holds for all such
it follows that
and
witnesses that
To build fix an a.d.t.
for
of size
for each
and let
be an injective enumeration of
Partition into (possibly empty) sets
such that
for all
Set
for
so if
and
then
Let
Notice that since each is an a.d.t., if
then
is bounded in
so
is bounded in
by regularity of
so
is an a.d.t. for
Split as
where
and
As argued in the proof of Lemma 17,
so the following holds:
Claim 18.
Claim 19.
Proof. Since is regular and
then
is bounded, and we can find
such that
for all
Let
and
Then
For each fix an a.d.t.
for
with
For
and
let
so
is an a.d.t. for
Moreover, since
is a limit ordinal for all
we have that
For
sufficiently large so
we have that
and therefore there must be some
such that
Since is regular, there must be some fixed
such that
for
many ordinals
But then
and
witnesses that
as we wanted to show.
It follows that
For define
so
if
and
otherwise. If
it follows that
for some
Since there is some
such that
and
for all
Let
be an a.d.t. for
of size strictly larger than
Given and
let
It follows that
is an a.d.t. for
where
if
and
otherwise. By definition of
we have that
for all
and it follows that there is an a.d.t.
for
of size
But then
Let so
If
has size
there is then some
and some
We then have that
and
It follows that
since it is in fact a bounded subset of
Also,
since otherwise it is a set
such that
is defined and
contradiction. Similarly,
This is a contradiction, because then is the union of three sets in
and is therefore also in
[…] Last lecture, I covered the first theorem of the Galvin-Hajnal paper and several corollaries. Recall that the result, Theorem 3.1, states that if and are uncountable regular cardinals, and is -inaccessible, then for any sequence of cardinals such that for all […]
[…] Proof: Suppose first that is -complete. If there is a -decreasing sequence let Then for all and therefore (since it is in fact an element of ) If is in this intersection, then is an -decreasing sequence of sets, contradiction. (This is just the proof of Lemma 14 in lecture II.6.) […]
[…] Zapletal has found a proof that uses a modicum of pcf theory, namely, Shelah’s result that any singular cardinal admits a scale, that is, there is an increasing sequence of regular cardinals cofinal in and a sequence of functions such that for all whenever then and whenever then for some Here, is the partial order induced by the ideal of bounded subsets of see Definition 13 in lecture II.6. […]
[…] extend and improve the Galvin-Hajnal results on powers of singulars of uncountable cofinality (see lectures II.6 and II.7). His first success was an extension to cardinals of countable cofinality. For example: […]
Hi,
In the proof of claim 19, in the line before the last one, should it be
instead of
or am I being silly?
Thanks.
Hi! There were a few other typos as well: In the proof of Lemma 17, “partition
” should have been “partition
”, and
should have been
In the paragraph above,
should have been
. They are now fixed.
Hi,
Ha yes, it is true, since the double indexed functions
go into
because
is an a.d.t for
and that’s where the functions are by definition.
Right after the proof of claim 19, in the third paragraph of the proof of
do we need “and
otherwise” instead of “and
otherwise”?
R.A
You are right, thanks!
[…] notes, I have a proof of a general version of this result, due to Galvin and Hajnal, see Lemma 12 here; essentially, we list all functions , and then replace them with (appropriate codes for) the […]
[…] notes, I have a proof of a general version of this result, due to Galvin and Hajnal, see Lemma 12 here; essentially, we list all functions , and then replace them with (appropriate codes for) the […]
[…] Zapletal has found a proof that uses a modicum of pcf theory, namely, Shelah’s result that any singular cardinal admits a scale, that is, there is an increasing sequence of regular cardinals cofinal in and a sequence of functions such that for all whenever then and whenever then for some Here, is the partial order induced by the ideal of bounded subsets of see Definition 13 in lecture II.6. […]
[…] extend and improve the Galvin-Hajnal results on powers of singulars of uncountable cofinality (see lectures II.6 and II.7). His first success was an extension to cardinals of countable cofinality. For […]
[…] Last lecture, I covered the first theorem of the Galvin-Hajnal paper and several corollaries. Recall that the result, Theorem 3.1, states that if and are uncountable regular cardinals, and is -inaccessible, then for any sequence of cardinals such that for all […]
[…] Proof: Suppose first that is -complete. If there is a -decreasing sequence let Then for all and therefore (since it is in fact an element of ) If is in this intersection, then is an -decreasing sequence of sets, contradiction. (This is just the proof of Lemma 14 in lecture II.6.) […]