Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2018 / iii / Paper 121 / 3 / iv

A cardinal-preserving forcing over $M$ leaves every ground-model cardinal number a cardinal in every generic extension. In the present notation, for every $M$-generic filter $G$ and every ordinal $\kappa \in M$,Set forcing preserves ordinals, and an old bijection witnessing that an ordinal is not a cardinal remains available. Thus this condition also means that the two models have exactly the same cardinals. Cardinality here is computed inside the respective models, not from their external sizes.

The countable chain condition for forcing says that every antichain in a forcing order is a countable set. Equivalently,In this question the assertion is evaluated inside $M$. Although every subset of the countable set $M$ is externally countable, that observation does not establish the internal chain condition: $M$ need not contain an enumeration of an antichain.

Assume $M$ satisfies the countable chain condition for forcing. We prove cardinal preservation by chain-condition forcing using the possible-values lemma for chain-condition forcing, and give the argument explicitly for ccc.

Let $\kappa$ be an uncountable cardinal of $M$. If it ceased to be a cardinal, some ordinal $\mu <\kappa$ would admit a surjection onto $\kappa$ in an extension. By the forcing theorem, there would be a condition $p$ and a forcing name $\dot{f}$ such thatInside $M$, for each $\xi <\mu$ choose a maximal antichain in a forcing order below $p$ deciding the ordinal value of $\dot{f}(\xi )$. Conditions deciding that value are dense below $p$. The chain condition makes the chosen antichain countable in $M$, so the corresponding set $B_{\xi }\subseteq \kappa$ of possible decided values is countable in $M$.

A generic filter containing $p$ meets the downward closure of every such maximal antichain, so its value $f(\xi )$ belongs to $B_{\xi }$. Therefore its whole range lies in the ground-model setThe last inequality is infinite cardinal arithmetic and uses only that $\kappa$ is uncountable and $\mu <\kappa$; no regularity of $\kappa$ is needed. Some ordinal in $\kappa \setminus B$ exists already in $M$ and cannot occur in the range, contradicting the forced surjectivity.

Finite cardinals cannot collapse, and $\omega$ cannot become finite: a finite domain has finite image, and transitive models agree on the natural numbers. Old non-cardinals cannot become cardinals because their old bijections persist. Thus