Some remarks on the partition calculus of ordinals

One of the early partition relation theorems which include ordinals was the observation of Erdös and Rado [7] that if κ = cf(κ) > ω then the Dushnik–Miller theorem can be sharpened to κ→(κ, ω + 1)2. The question on the possible further extension of this result was answered by Hajnal who in [8] proved that the continuum hypothesis implies ω1 ↛ (ω1, ω + 2)2. He actually proved the stronger result ω1 ↛ (ω: 2))2. The consistency of the relation κ↛(κ, (ω: 2))2 was later extensively studied. Baumgartner [1] proved it for every κ which is the successor of a regular cardinal. Laver [9] showed that if κ is Mahlo there is a forcing notion which adds a witness for κ↛ (κ, (ω: 2))2 and preserves Mahloness, ω-Mahloness of κ, etc. We notice in connection with these results that λ→(λ, (ω: 2))2 holds if λ is singular, in fact λ→(λ, (μ: n))2 for n < ω, μ < λ (Theorem 4).In [11] Todorčević proved that if cf(λ) > ω then a ccc forcing can add a counter-example to λ→(λ, ω + 2)2. We give an alternative proof of this (Theorem 5) and extend it to larger cardinals: if GCH holds, cf (λ) > κ = cf (κ) then < κ-closed, κ+-c.c. forcing adds a counter-example to λ→(λ, κ + 2)2 (Theorem 6).Erdös and Hajnal remarked in their problem paper [5] that Galvin had proved ω2→(ω1, ω + 2)2 and he had also asked if ω2→(ω1, ω + 3)2 is true. We show in Theorem 1 that the negative relation is consistent.