Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2002/iii/paper-10/4/solution

Write for the infinite subsets of an infinite . A Ramsey set of infinite subsets is a family such that each infinite ground set has an infinite subset with
The convention asking only for one such homogeneous cone is weaker; the proof below establishes the displayed property and, in fact, the stronger completely Ramsey set property.
For a finite stem and an infinite reservoir lying above every element of , put
These sets form the basic open neighbourhoods of the Ellentuck topology, or star topology. Here is an initial segment of every member of . A star-Borel set means a member of the sigma-algebra generated by these open sets. A family is completely Ramsey if every has a homogeneous refinement with infinite and the same stem . We prove this for every star-Borel set, beginning with open sets.
Fix a star-open family and a basic neighbourhood . An infinite reservoir above a finite stem accepts if . It rejects if no infinite subset of accepts . A reservoir decides if it accepts or rejects it. Any reservoir has a refinement deciding a prescribed stem: take an accepting refinement if there is one, and otherwise the current reservoir rejects. Both kinds of decision persist under infinite thinning.
First refine to decide . If the decision is acceptance, the required homogeneous neighbourhood has already been found. Suppose it is rejection. We use deciding all finite stems by fusion to select
from nested infinite reservoirs. After selecting , successively thin the remaining reservoir to decide every stem with . There are only finitely many such , so every stage can be completed. Choose from that thinned reservoir and repeat. Let . For every finite , the tail
decides ; for , use all of . Indeed, the stem was decided at the stage when its largest point was selected, and its final tail is a subset of the reservoir retained at that stage. The empty stem remains rejected by the initial decision.
The crucial finite-obstruction fact is that a rejected stem has only finitely many accepting one-point extensions. More precisely, suppose rejects . If infinitely many had accepting , collect those into an infinite . Any has a least point , and its remaining tail lies in . Acceptance at would then imply . Thus would accept , contradicting rejection. This proves the finitely many accepting extensions of a rejected stem assertion with the reservoirs specified.
Thin a second time. Having selected a finite prefix of , maintain that every stem with a subset of that prefix is rejected relative to its tail in . Each such stem has finitely many forbidden next points leading to acceptance. Choose the next point of above the prefix and outside the union of these finitely many finite forbidden sets. The deciding property of then makes every newly created stem rejected. Starting with the rejected empty extension gives an infinite all of whose finite extensions of are rejected.
We claim . Otherwise take . Star-openness supplies a basic neighbourhood inside containing . Extend its finite stem along until it contains ; the new stem has the form for a finite initial segment of . The remaining infinite tail of is a subset of and accepts that stem, contradicting rejection. This proves the fusion proof for open Ellentuck sets: every star-open set is completely Ramsey.
Next call completely Ramsey-null if every has a same-stem refinement disjoint from . Every star-nowhere dense set is completely Ramsey-null. Indeed, the complement of its star-closure is star-open and dense. Apply the just-proved open-set result inside . The homogeneous alternative disjoint from would be a nonempty open set contained in the closure of a nowhere-dense set, which is impossible. Hence some lies entirely in and avoids .
Countable unions of completely Ramsey-null sets are again completely Ramsey-null. Here is the full Ellentuck meagre-set fusion lemma. Given and , construct selected prefixes and nested unused infinite reservoirs. At stage , refine the reservoir, still lying above , to arrange
Each constraint can be imposed by complete Ramsey-nullness, with all earlier constraints preserved by thinning; there are finitely many constraints. Choose and retain the tail above it for the next stage. Start with and the reservoir .
Let . If and is fixed, take any and put . Every remaining point of lies in , so and . Therefore
This construction handles all subsets of a selected prefix, not merely the full prefix: members of may skip arbitrarily many selected points. Since a meagre set is a countable union of nowhere-dense sets, every star-meagre set is completely Ramsey-null.
It remains to pass from star-open sets to star-Borel sets. Let consist of the families expressible as
where is star-open and is star-meagre. We verify directly that is a sigma-algebra. It contains every open set. Countable unions remain in , because
and a countable union of meagre sets is meagre. For complements, replace by the open set . The omitted part is , the boundary of the open set , which is closed and nowhere dense: a nonempty open subset of must meet , so it cannot lie in this boundary. Thus
a meagre set. Subsets of meagre sets are meagre as well, since taking a subset preserves nowhere denseness. These observations prove the claimed sigma-algebra property. Hence every star-Borel set belongs to .
Finally, for and any , first use complete Ramsey-nullness to obtain avoiding . On that neighbourhood and coincide. Apply the open-set result to within to get a homogeneous . Therefore
Taking gives the requested homogeneous infinite-subset cone inside any given infinite ground set. Every closure, interior, open set and meagreness used in this proof refers to the Ellentuck topology; substituting the coarser ordinary topology at an intermediate step would change the assertion.

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