Aleph-two Aronszajn tree 2026-10-06
A set-theoretic tree of height , levels of size at most , and no cofinal branch. The Continuum hypothesis supplies one through the minimal-walk tree.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2015 iii Paper 24 2 c Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Take and choose a club sequence on , each of order type at most . For a successor use its predecessor as a singleton; at a limit use a cofinal sequence of minimal length. Form the minimal-walk treeordered by proper extension. Its height is .
For , the initial segment has order type strictly below , and is countable. The strict inequality follows because a point of at or above occurs later in its enumeration. Hence every entry of every trace is countable. Under the Continuum hypothesis, for ,There are at most finite sequences of such sets. The trace coherence lemma for minimal walks says that, for , the value determines . The case adds at most one node. Thus for every level.
Suppose that had a cofinal branch, and take the union of its functions, , with domain . Every is injective by the proper-initial-segment argument, so is injective too. On the stationary setthis set is stationary because the supremum of a strictly increasing -sequence from any club set has cofinality and lies in that club. The union of the finitely many countable entries of is bounded below . Assign a strict upper bound below to obtain a regressive function. By Fodor lemma, there is a stationary and a single such that every entry of lies inside for . There are at most such finite sequences by the same cardinal arithmetic, but , contradicting injectivity.