July 31
Corey Switzer, CUNY
Dissertation defense: Alternative Cichoń diagrams and forcing axioms compatible with CH
This dissertation surveys several topics in the general areas of iterated forcing, infinite combinatorics and set theory of the reals. There are two parts. In the first half I consider alternative versions of the Cichoń diagram. First I show that for a wide variety of reduction concepts there is a Cichoń diagram for effective cardinal characteristics relativized to that reduction. As an application I investigate in detail the Cichoń diagram for degrees of constructibility relative to a fixed inner model of ZFC. Then I study generalizations of cardinal characteristics to the space of functions from $\omega^\omega$ to $\omega^\omega$. I prove that these cardinals can be organized into two diagrams analogous to the standard Cichoń diagram show several independence results and investigate their relation to cardinal invariants on omega. In the second half of the thesis I look at forcing axioms compatible with CH. First I consider Jensen's subcomplete and subproper forcing. I generalize these notions to larger classes which are (apparently) much more nicely behaved structurally. I prove iteration and preservation theorems for both classes and use these to produce many new models of the subcomplete forcing axiom. Finally I deal with dee-complete forcing and its associated axiom DCFA. Extending a well-known result of Shelah, I show that if a tree of height $\omega_1$ with no branch can be embedded into an $\omega_1$ tree, possibly with uncountable branches, then it can be specialized without adding reals. As a consequence I show that DCFA implies there are no Kurepa trees, even if CH fails.