A Jech–Kunen tree is a set-theoretic tree with properties that are incompatible with the generalized continuum hypothesis. It is named after Thomas Jech and Kenneth Kunen, both of whom studied the possibility and consequences of its existence.

Definition

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A ω1-tree is a tree with cardinality   and height ω1, where ω1 is the first uncountable ordinal and   is the associated cardinal number. A Jech–Kunen tree is a ω1-tree in which the number of branches is greater than   and less than  .

Existence

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Thomas Jech (1971) found the first model in which this tree exists, and Kenneth Kunen (1975) showed that, assuming the continuum hypothesis and   , the existence of a Jech–Kunen tree is equivalent to the existence of a compact Hausdorff space with weight   and cardinality strictly between   and  .

References

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  • Jech, Thomas J. (1971), "Trees", Journal of Symbolic Logic, 36: 1–14, doi:10.2307/2271510, MR 0284331
  • Kunen (1975), "On the cardinality of compact spaces", Notices of the AMS, 22: 212
  • Jin, Renling (1993), "The differences between Kurepa trees and Jech-Kunen trees", Archive for Mathematical Logic, 32: 369–379