TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY Volume 365, Number 1, January 2013, Pages 23–58 S 0002-9947(2012)05468-7 Article electronically published on June 8, 2012
INFINITE DIMENSIONAL PERFECT SET THEOREMS
TAMAS´ MATRAI´
Abstract. What largeness and structural assumptions on A ⊆ [R]ω can guar- antee the existence of a non-empty perfect set P ⊆ R such that [P ]ω ⊆ A? Such a set P is called A-homogeneous. We show that even if A is open, in general it is independent of ZFC whether for a cardinal κ, the existence of an A-homogeneous set H ∈ [R]κ implies the existence of a non-empty perfect A-homogeneous set. On the other hand, we prove an infinite dimensional analogue of Mycielski’s Theorem: if A is large in the sense of a suitable Baire category-like notion, then there exists a non-empty perfect A-homogeneous set. We introduce fusion games to prove this and other infinite dimensional perfect set theorems. Finally we apply this theory to show that it is independent of ZFC whether Tukey reductions of the maximal analytic cofinal type can be witnessed by definable Tukey maps.
1. Introduction The Perfect Set Theorem says that an analytic subset of a Polish space is either countable or has a non-empty perfect subset (see e.g. [11, Theorem 29.1, p. 226]). The complexity assumption in this result is consistently optimal: in L there exists 1 an uncountable Π1 set without non-empty perfect subsets (see e.g. [9, Corollary 25.37]). However, one is often obliged to quest for a perfect set which satisfies multidi- mensional relations. Let N<ωbe fixed and let [X]N denote the set of N element subsets of X.ThenanN dimensional perfect set theorem should address the following problem: what largeness and structural assumptions on A ⊆ [X]N can guarantee the existence of a non-empty perfect set P ⊆ X such that [P ]N ⊆ A? Such a set P is called A-homogeneous. In [12, Theorem 2.2, p. 620], W. Kubi´sprovedthatifX is a Polish space, N A ⊆ [X] is Gδ and there exists an uncountable A-homogeneous set, then there exists a non-empty perfect A-homogeneous set. Obviously, as far as Gδ sets are concerned, this result is the exact multidimensional analogue of the Perfect Set Theorem. The surprising fact is that the complexity assumption in this result is also optimal: the Turing reducibility relation on 2ω (see Definition 2.4) defines ω 2 ω an Fσ set A ⊆ [2 ] such that there exists an A-homogeneous set H ⊆ 2 with |H| = ω1 but there is no non-empty perfect A-homogeneous set. For A analytic, W. Kubi´s and S. Shelah [13] investigated a rank function which decides whether the existence of an A-homogeneous set with a given cardinality implies the existence of a non-empty perfect A-homogeneous set (see also [8], [23]).
Received by the editors October 8, 2009 and, in revised form, September 20, 2010. 2010 Mathematics Subject Classification. Primary 03E15. This research was partially supported by the OTKA grants K 61600, K 49786 and K 72655 and by the NSERC grants 129977 and A-7354.