Mathematical logic and foundations Definition
Proper forcing axiom
Builds on Martin's axiomForcingStationary set
Definition
Partial orders, dense sets and filters are as in Martin's axiom. For an uncountable set , let be the set of countable subsets of . A set is club if both conditions hold. It contains the union of each increasing sequence of its members. Each countable subset of is contained in a member of . A set is stationary if it meets each club subset of . A partial order is proper if forcing with preserves stationarity: for each uncountable , each stationary stays stationary in the generic extension. The proper forcing axiom, PFA, is the following statement. Let be a proper partial order, and let be a family of at most dense subsets of . Then some filter on meets every member of .
Remarks
Example: each ccc partial order is proper, so PFA implies . Each countably closed partial order is proper too. Non-example: the partial order that collapses to be countable, by finite partial functions from to , is not proper. Proper forcings preserve , while this one makes countable. Baumgartner proved that PFA is consistent relative to a supercompact cardinal. PFA implies , and it implies that every two -dense sets of reals are order isomorphic. These notions extend the stationary sets of a cardinal to sets of countable subsets.
Reading path
To understand this page from the ground up, read these 42 pages in order. The foundations come first.
- Element definition
- Forcing concept
- Proposition concept
- Set bounded above definition
- Set definition
- Implication definition
- Predicate definition
- Supremum definition
- Ordered pair definition
- Existential quantifier definition
- Universal quantifier definition
- Cartesian product definition
- Subset definition
- Uniqueness quantifier definition
- Binary relation definition
- Power set definition
- Antisymmetric relation definition
- Reflexive relation definition
- Transitive relation definition
- Function definition
- Preorder definition
- Codomain definition
- Injective function definition
- Partial order definition
- Surjective function definition
- Least element definition
- Total order definition
- Bijective function definition
- Well-order definition
- Countably infinite set definition
- Equinumerous sets definition
- Ordinal number definition
- Cardinality definition
- Cardinal number definition
- Cofinality definition
- Aleph-null object
- Regular cardinal definition
- Club set definition
- Cardinality of the continuum object
- Stationary set definition
- Martin's axiom definition
- Proper forcing axiom definition
Further reading
About this page
| Tag | KJT0AXWQXP |
|---|---|
| URI | m2://KJT0AXWQXP |
| Kind | definition |
| Writing | W0 stub |
| MSC | 03E57, 03E50 |
| Defines | Proper forcing axiom |
| Uses | Martin's axiom, Forcing, Stationary set |
| Changed | 2 November 2026 |
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