Partition properties for simply definable colourings

Abstract

We study partition properties for uncountable regular cardinals that arise by restricting partition properties defining large cardinal notions to classes of simply definable colourings. We show that both large cardinal assumptions and forcing axioms imply that there is a homogeneous closed unbounded subset of ω1 for every colouring of the finite sets of countable ordinals that is definable by a Σ1-formula that only uses the cardinal ω1 and real numbers as parameters. Moreover, it is shown that certain large cardinal properties cause analogous partition properties to hold at the given large cardinal and these implications yield natural examples of inaccessible cardinals that possess strong partition properties for Σ1-definable colourings and are not weakly compact. In contrast, we show that Σ1- definability behaves fundamentally different at ω2 by showing that various large cardinal assumptions and Martin’s Maximum are compatible with the existence of a colouring of pairs of elements of ω2 that is definable by a Σ1-formula with parameter ω2 and has no uncountable homogeneous set. Our results will also allow us to derive tight bounds for the consistency strengths of various partition properties for definable colourings. Finally, we use the developed theory to study the question whether certain homeomorphisms that witness failures of weak compactness at small cardinals can be simply definable.