We show that the countable universal homogeneous meet-tree has a generic automorphism, but it does not have a generic pair of automorphisms.

We prove that the existence of a measurable cardinal is equivalent to the existence of a normal space whose modal logic coincides with the modal logic of the Kripke frame isomorphic to the powerset of a two element set.

I investigate the relationships between three hierarchies of reflection principles for a forcing class $\Gamma $ : the hierarchy of bounded forcing axioms, of $\Sigma ^1_1$ -absoluteness, and of Aronszajn tree preservation principles. The latter principle at level $\kappa $ says that whenever T is a tree of height $\omega _1$ and width $\kappa $ that does not have a branch of order type $\omega _1$ , and whenever ${\mathord {\mathbb P}}$ is a forcing notion in $\Gamma $ , then it is not the case that ${\mathord {\mathbb P}}$ forces that T has such a branch. $\Sigma ^1_1$ -absoluteness serves as an intermediary between these principles and the bounded forcing axioms. A special case of the main result is that for forcing classes that don’t add reals, the three principles at level $2^\omega $ are equivalent. Special attention is paid to certain subclasses of subcomplete forcing, since these are natural forcing classes that don’t add reals.

We show that there is a Borel graph on a standard Borel space of Borel chromatic number three that admits a Borel homomorphism to every analytic graph on a standard Borel space of Borel chromatic number at least three. Moreover, we characterize the Borel graphs on standard Borel spaces of vertex-degree at most two with this property and show that the analogous result for digraphs fails.

We say that $\mathcal {I}$ is an ideal independent family if no element of ${\mathcal {I}}$ is a subset mod finite of a union of finitely many other elements of ${\mathcal {I}}.$ We will show that the minimum size of a maximal ideal independent family is consistently bigger than both $\mathfrak {d}$ and $\mathfrak {u},$ this answers a question of Donald Monk.

Extending Aanderaa’s classical result that $\pi ^{1}_{1} < \sigma ^{1}_{1}$ , we determine the order between any two patterns of iterated $\Sigma ^{1}_{1}$ - and $\Pi ^{1}_{1}$ -reflection on ordinals. We show that this order of linear reflection is a prewellordering of length $\omega ^{\omega }$ . This requires considering the relationship between linear and some non-linear reflection patterns, such as $\sigma \wedge \pi $ , the pattern of simultaneous $\Sigma ^{1}_{1}$ - and $\Pi ^{1}_{1}$ -reflection. The proofs involve linking the lengths of $\alpha $ -recursive wellorderings to various forms of stability and reflection properties satisfied by ordinals $\alpha $ within standard and non-standard models of set theory.

We introduce the $\Sigma _1$ -definable universal finite sequence and prove that it exhibits the universal extension property amongst the countable models of set theory under end-extension. That is, (i) the sequence is $\Sigma _1$ -definable and provably finite; (ii) the sequence is empty in transitive models; and (iii) if M is a countable model of set theory in which the sequence is s and t is any finite extension of s in this model, then there is an end-extension of M to a model in which the sequence is t. Our proof method grows out of a new infinitary-logic-free proof of the Barwise extension theorem, by which any countable model of set theory is end-extended to a model of $V=L$ or indeed any theory true in a suitable submodel of the original model. The main theorem settles the modal logic of end-extensional potentialism, showing that the potentialist validities of the models of set theory under end-extensions are exactly the assertions of S4. Finally, we introduce the end-extensional maximality principle, which asserts that every possibly necessary sentence is already true, and show that every countable model extends to a model satisfying it.

For every countable wellordering $\alpha $ greater than $\omega $ , it is shown that clopen determinacy for games of length $\alpha $ with moves in $\mathbb {N}$ is equivalent to determinacy for a class of shorter games, but with more complicated payoff. In particular, it is shown that clopen determinacy for games of length $\omega ^2$ is equivalent to $\sigma $ -projective determinacy for games of length $\omega $ and that clopen determinacy for games of length $\omega ^3$ is equivalent to determinacy for games of length $\omega ^2$ in the smallest $\sigma $ -algebra on $\mathbb {R}$ containing all open sets and closed under the real game quantifier.

We consider a seemingly weaker form of $\Delta ^{1}_{1}$ Turing determinacy.

Let $2 \leqslant \rho < \omega _{1}^{\mathsf {CK}}$ , $\textrm{Weak-Turing-Det}_{\rho }(\Delta ^{1}_{1})$ is the statement:

Every $\Delta ^{1}_{1}$ set of reals cofinal in the Turing degrees contains two Turing distinct, $\Delta ^{0}_{\rho }$ -equivalent reals.

We show in $\mathsf {ZF}^-$ :

$\textrm{Weak-Turing-Det}_{\rho }(\Delta ^{1}_{1})$ implies: for every $\nu < \omega _{1}^{\mathsf {CK}}$ there is a transitive model ${M \models \mathsf {ZF}^{-} + \textrm{``}\aleph _{\nu } \textrm{ exists''.}}$

As a corollary:

• If every cofinal $\Delta ^{1}_{1}$ set of Turing degrees contains both a degree and its jump, then for every $\nu < \omega_1^{\mathsf{CK}}$ , there is atransitive model: $M \models \mathsf{ZF}^{-} + \textrm{``}\aleph_\nu \textrm{ exists''.}$

• • With a simple proof, this improves upon a well-known result of Harvey Friedman on the strength of Borel determinacy (though not assessed level-by-level).

• • Invoking Tony Martin’s proof of Borel determinacy, $\textrm{Weak-Turing-Det}_{\rho }(\Delta ^{1}_{1})$ implies $\Delta ^{1}_{1}$ determinacy.

• • We show further that, assuming $\Delta ^{1}_{1}$ Turing determinacy, or Borel Turing determinacy, as needed:

  • – Every cofinal $\Sigma ^{1}_{1}$ set of Turing degrees contains a “hyp-Turing cone”: ${\{x \in \mathcal {D} \mid d_{0} \leqslant _{T} x \leqslant _{h} d_{0} \}}$ .

  • – For a sequence $(A_{k})_{k < \omega }$ of analytic sets of Turing degrees, cofinal in $\mathcal {D}$ , $\bigcap _{k} A_{k}$ is cofinal in $\mathcal {D}$ .

It is a long-standing open question whether every Polish group that is not locally compact admits a Borel action on a standard Borel space whose associated orbit equivalence relation is not essentially countable. We answer this question positively for the class of all Polish groups that embed in the isometry group of a locally compact metric space. This class contains all non-archimedean Polish groups, for which we provide an alternative proof based on a new criterion for non-essential countability. Finally, we provide the following variant of a theorem of Solecki: every infinite-dimensional Banach space has a continuous action whose orbit equivalence relation is Borel but not essentially countable.

We prove that if the set of unordered pairs of real numbers is coloured by finitely many colours, there is a set of reals homeomorphic to the rationals whose pairs have at most two colours. Our proof uses large cardinals and verifies a conjecture of Galvin from the 1970s. We extend this result to an essentially optimal class of topological spaces in place of the reals.

We show that the uniform measure-theoretic ergodic decomposition of a countable Borel equivalence relation $(X, E)$ may be realized as the topological ergodic decomposition of a continuous action of a countable group $\Gamma \curvearrowright X$ generating E. We then apply this to the study of the cardinal algebra $\mathcal {K}(E)$ of equidecomposition types of Borel sets with respect to a compressible countable Borel equivalence relation $(X, E)$ . We also make some general observations regarding quotient topologies on topological ergodic decompositions, with an application to weak equivalence of measure-preserving actions.

We consider the modality “ $\varphi $ is true in every $\sigma $ -centered forcing extension,” denoted $\square \varphi $ , and its dual “ $\varphi $ is true in some $\sigma $ -centered forcing extension,” denoted $\lozenge \varphi $ (where $\varphi $ is a statement in set theory), which give rise to the notion of a principle of $\sigma $ -centered forcing. We prove that if ZFC is consistent, then the modal logic of $\sigma $ -centered forcing, i.e., the ZFC-provable principles of $\sigma $ -centered forcing, is exactly $\mathsf {S4.2}$ . We also generalize this result to other related classes of forcing.

This paper critically examines two arguments against the generic multiverse, both of which are due to W. Hugh Woodin. Versions of the first argument have appeared a number of times in print, while the second argument is relatively novel. We shall investigate these arguments through the lens of two different attitudes one may take toward the methodology and metaphysics of set theory; and we shall observe that the impact of these arguments depends significantly on which of these attitudes is upheld. Our examination of the second argument involves the development of a new (inner) model for Steel’s multiverse theory, which is delivered in the Appendix.

This paper establishes a conjecture of Steel [7] regarding the structure of elementary embeddings from a level of the cumulative hierarchy into itself. Steel’s question is related to the Mitchell order on these embeddings, studied in [5] and [7]. Although this order is known to be illfounded, Steel conjectured that it has certain large wellfounded suborders, which is what we establish. The proof relies on a simple and general analysis of the much broader class of extender embeddings and a variant of the Mitchell order called the internal relation.

We obtain a criterion for an analytic subset of a Euclidean space to contain points of differentiability of a typical Lipschitz function: namely, that it cannot be covered by countably many sets, each of which is closed and purely unrectifiable (has a zero-length intersection with every $C^1$ curve). Surprisingly, we establish that any set failing this criterion witnesses the opposite extreme of typical behaviour: in any such coverable set, a typical Lipschitz function is everywhere severely non-differentiable.

A subset X of a Polish group G is Haar null if there exists a Borel probability measure μ and a Borel set B containing X such that μ(gBh) = 0 for every g, h ∈ G. A set X is Haar meager if there exists a compact metric space K, a continuous function f : K → G and a Borel set B containing X such that f−1(gBh) is meager in K for every g, h ∈ G. We calculate (in ZFC) the four cardinal invariants (add, cov, non, cof) of these two σ-ideals for the simplest non-locally compact Polish group, namely in the case $G = \mathbb {Z}^\omega$. In fact, most results work for separable Banach spaces as well, and many results work for Polish groups admitting a two-sided invariant metric. This answers a question of the first named author and Vidnyánszky.

Henle, Mathias, and Woodin proved in [21] that, provided that ${\omega }{\rightarrow }({\omega })^{{\omega }}$ holds in a model M of ZF, then forcing with $([{\omega }]^{{\omega }},{\subseteq }^*)$ over M adds no new sets of ordinals, thus earning the name a “barren” extension. Moreover, under an additional assumption, they proved that this generic extension preserves all strong partition cardinals. This forcing thus produces a model $M[\mathcal {U}]$ , where $\mathcal {U}$ is a Ramsey ultrafilter, with many properties of the original model M. This begged the question of how important the Ramseyness of $\mathcal {U}$ is for these results. In this paper, we show that several classes of $\sigma $ -closed forcings which generate non-Ramsey ultrafilters have the same properties. Such ultrafilters include Milliken–Taylor ultrafilters, a class of rapid p-points of Laflamme, k-arrow p-points of Baumgartner and Taylor, and extensions to a class of ultrafilters constructed by Dobrinen, Mijares, and Trujillo. Furthermore, the class of Boolean algebras $\mathcal {P}({\omega }^{{\alpha }})/{\mathrm {Fin}}^{\otimes {\alpha }}$ , $2\le {\alpha }<{\omega }_1$ , forcing non-p-points also produce barren extensions.

We show that if M is a countable transitive model of $\text {ZF}$ and if $a,b$ are reals not in M, then there is a G generic over M such that $b \in L[a,G]$ . We then present several applications such as the following: if J is any countable transitive model of $\text {ZFC}$ and $M \not \subseteq J$ is another countable transitive model of $\text {ZFC}$ of the same ordinal height $\alpha $ , then there is a forcing extension N of J such that $M \cup N$ is not included in any transitive model of $\text {ZFC}$ of height $\alpha $ . Also, assuming $0^{\#}$ exists, letting S be the set of reals generic over L, although S is disjoint from the Turing cone above $0^{\#}$ , we have that for any non-constructible real a, $\{ a \oplus s : s \in S \}$ is cofinal in the Turing degrees.

Let $\mathcal {N}(b)$ be the set of real numbers that are normal to base b. A well-known result of Ki and Linton [19] is that $\mathcal {N}(b)$ is $\boldsymbol {\Pi }^0_3$ -complete. We show that the set ${\mathcal {N}}^\perp (b)$ of reals, which preserve $\mathcal {N}(b)$ under addition, is also $\boldsymbol {\Pi }^0_3$ -complete. We use the characterization of ${\mathcal {N}}^\perp (b),$ given by Rauzy, in terms of an entropy-like quantity called the noise. It follows from our results that no further characterization theorems could result in a still better bound on the complexity of ${\mathcal {N}}^\perp (b)$ . We compute the exact descriptive complexity of other naturally occurring sets associated with noise. One of these is complete at the $\boldsymbol {\Pi }^0_4$ level. Finally, we get upper and lower bounds on the Hausdorff dimension of the level sets associated with the noise.