Skip to main content
4 of 5
added 522 characters in body; edited body
Toink
  • 642
  • 7
  • 14

do behavior of gimel or GCH determine all infinte products of cardinals?

Let $Card$ be the class of infinite cardinals and $p\colon Card^2\to Card$ be given by $(\kappa,\lambda)\mapsto\kappa^\lambda$.
Assuming GCH it is known that $p(\kappa,\lambda)$ is either $\kappa$ (if $\lambda < cof(\kappa)$) or $\kappa^+$ (if $cof(\kappa)≤\lambda ≤\kappa$) or $\lambda^+$ (if $\kappa < \lambda$).
However, knowing less can be enough. For instance the function $\gimel\colon \kappa\mapsto\kappa^{cof(\kappa)}$ completely determines $p$.

Generalizing from powers to arbitrary products yields the following natural question:

Consider a sequence $(\kappa_i\mid i<\delta)$ of (infinite) cardinals. Can the value $\prod\limits_{i<\delta}\kappa_i$ be de determined knowing (all values of) $\gimel$ or assuming GCH?

One can reformulate the question as: under which circumstances is $\prod\limits_{i<\delta}\kappa_i$ determined by $p$?

EDIT: So I guess this is the final result:
For $(\kappa(i)\mid i<\delta)$ nondecreasing sequence of infinite cardinals we have for $\delta=\lambda_0\alpha_0+\ldots+\lambda_l\alpha_l$ (every ordinal can be written this way) and $\delta_k:=\lambda_0\alpha_0+\ldots+\lambda_{k}\alpha_{k}$ with cardinals $\lambda_0>\ldots>\lambda_l$ and ordinals $0<\alpha_k<\lambda_k^+$:
$\prod\limits_{i<\delta}\kappa(i) = \max\limits_{0 ≤ k ≤ l} \left(\sup\limits_{i<\lambda_k\alpha_k}\kappa(\delta_{k-1}+i)\right)^{\lambda_k}$

Toink
  • 642
  • 7
  • 14