Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2005/iii/paper-27/12/solution

The Fodor lemma, also called Fodor's theorem, states: if is a regular uncountable cardinal, is stationary and is regressive, meaning for every nonzero , then some fibre is stationary.
Delete zero from , which preserves stationarity. Suppose no fibre is stationary. For each , choose a club set avoiding that fibre. The diagonal intersection
is a club. To prove unboundedness, start above an arbitrary bound and choose a strictly increasing sequence with in every for . The intersection of these fewer-than- clubs is club by club filter completeness. Put . For any , every sufficiently late lies in , so its closure gives . Thus . For closure of , let be a limit point of ; for each , the members of above witnessing that limit lie in , and closure gives .
Stationarity supplies . Since , we have , but that club was chosen to avoid the fibre containing . This contradiction proves the theorem. For completeness, club filter completeness follows by a similar diagonal sequence: cycle through fewer than clubs over rounds, each time choosing a larger member of the next club. Regularity keeps the supremum below , and every club is visited cofinally often in the construction, so its closure contains the supremum. Their intersection is also closed.

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