Diamonds, compactness, and measure sequences

We establish the consistency of the failure of the diamond principle on a cardinal [Formula: see text] which satisfies a strong simultaneous reflection property. The result is based on an analysis of Radin forcing, and further leads to a characterization of weak compactness of [Formula: see text] in a Radin generic extension.

Chains of P-points

It is proved that the Continuum Hypothesis implies that any sequence of rapid P-points of length ${<}\mathfrak{c}^{+}$ that is increasing with respect to the Rudin–Keisler ordering is bounded above by a rapid P-point. This is an improvement of a result from B. Kuzeljevic and D. Raghavan. It is also proved that Jensen’s diamond principle implies the existence of an unbounded strictly increasing sequence of P-points of length $\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}_{1}$ in the Rudin–Keisler ordering. This shows that restricting to the class of rapid P-points is essential for the first result.

SQUARE WITH BUILT-IN DIAMOND-PLUS

We formulate combinatorial principles that combine the square principle with various strong forms of the diamond principle, and prove that the strongest amongst them holds inLfor every infinite cardinal.As an application, we prove that the following two hold inL:1.For every infinite regular cardinalλ, there exists a special λ+-Aronszajn tree whose projection is almost Souslin;2.For every infinite cardinalλ, there exists arespectingλ+-Kurepa tree; Roughly speaking, this means that this λ+-Kurepa tree looks very much like the λ+-Souslin trees that Jensen constructed inL.

The self-iterability of L[E]

Let L[E] be an iterable tame extender model. We analyze to which extent L[E] knows fragments of its own iteration strategy. Specifically, we prove that inside L[E], for every cardinal κ which is not a limit of Woodin cardinals there is some cutpoint t < κ such that Jκ[E] is iterable above t with respect to iteration trees of length less than κ.As an application we show L[E] to be a model of the following two cardinals versions of the diamond principle. If λ > κ > ω1 are cardinals, then holds true, and if in addition λ is regular, then holds true.

Guessing with Mutually Stationary Sets

We use the mutually stationary sets of Foreman and Magidor as a tool to establish the validity of the two-cardinal version of the diamond principle in some special cases.