Concerning ultrafilters on ultrapowers

Abstract

This paper concerns ultrafilters on a cardinal γ extending the filter of λ-closed, unbounded sets, λ < γ. The history of these ultrafilters is closely connected with that of the axiom of determinacy (AD). Solovay noticed first that, under AD, there was such an ultrafilter for γ = ℵ1; λ = ω. Later, Kleinberg found that the existence of such ultrafilters followed from the partition relation γ → (γ)λ+λ. Specific instances of this and more powerful relations on cardinals were then proved from AD by Martin, Kunen, Paris, and others. The axiom of determinacy was recently shown consistent with ZF relative to something less than a supercompact cardinal by Martin and Steel. Solovay's and Kleinberg's results were actually stronger, and we discuss this at the end of the paper. Good references for these results include [K2] and [KM].We are interested here in the case where γ is the ultrapower of a strong partition cardinal κ (a cardinal satisfying for all α < κ). Such cardinals exist in great abundance assuming AD, and in fact, if sufficiently many cardinals are strong, then AD holds in L[R] [KKMW].