Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2015/iii/paper-24/4/c/ii/solution

First express inaccessibility by universally excluding witnesses to its failure. Besides being an ordinal greater than , require that for every there is no function from cofinal in , and no injection from into . The first condition gives regular cardinalhood; the second says that is a strong limit cardinal. Under the axiom of choice these are exactly the conditions for a strongly inaccessible cardinal.
These are Pi-one formulas modulo ZF: the only unbounded quantifiers universally range over possible functions. Being a function of the specified domain, having bounded or cofinal range in , and being an injection whose values are subsets of can all be written with bounded formulas in set theory, without using a power-set object as an unbounded existential witness. Consequently inaccessibility is downward absolute to a transitive inner model of ZFC.
Now suppose is Mahlo in . It is inaccessible in the constructible universe , and every -inaccessible ordinal below it is also inaccessible in . Let be any set that regards as a club set in . Closure and unboundedness are absolute properties of this fixed set of ordinals, so is also a club set in . By Mahloness in , it contains an ordinal that is inaccessible in , hence in . Every -club therefore meets the -inaccessible ordinals below . Thus Mahloness is downward absolute to the constructible universe:

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