Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2016 iii Paper 121 1 d Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Yes. A cardinal fixed point of the singular cardinal enumeration is obtained by countable iteration. Start with and putThe singular cardinal enumeration is strictly increasing and satisfies for every ordinal ; the latter follows by transfinite induction for any strictly increasing ordinal-valued enumeration. If equality occurs at some , that cardinal number is already a witness. Otherwise the sequence is strictly increasing. Put . This is an uncountable singular cardinal of cofinality .
For every , some has , and thereforeAlso , so . At a limit ordinal index, if the supremum of all preceding enumerated cardinals is itself singular, it is exactly the next member: every smaller singular cardinal already has a preceding index. ThusThis argument uses continuity only at a singular supremum; the enumeration need not be continuous at a weakly inaccessible cardinal.