Unsolvability of several questions of convergence of series and sequences (Q799878)

In this paper some questions from the theory of infinite series that are unsolvable in the axiomatic system of Zermelo and Fraenkel (ZFS) are investigated. Let (1) \(\sum a_ n\), (2) \(\sum b_ n\) be two convergent (divergent) series with positive terms. The series (1) is said to be more slowly convergent (divergent) than (2) if \(\sum^{\infty}_{n=N}b_ n=\sigma (\sum^{\infty}_{n=N}a_ n)(N\to\infty ) (\sum^{N}_{n=1}a_ n=\sigma (\sum^{N}_{n=1}b_ n)(N\to\infty ))\). A system S of convergent (divergent) series with positive terms is called a comparison system provided that there is no series more slowly convergent (divergent) than each series from S. It is well-known that no countable system S of series with positive terms is a comparison system. The question of the minimal cardinality of a comparison system is unsolvable in (ZFS). It is shown that the assertion about the existence of a comparison system S with the cardinality \(| S| <c\) (c is the cardinality of the continuum) is consistent with the (ZFS). Some further results are closely related to the conjecture of Erdős and Piranian (EP). An increasing sequence \(\ell =\{\ell_ k\}\) of positive integers is said to be nowhere dense in the increasing sequence \(k=\{k_ r\}\) of positive integers if there is only a finite number of intervals \(<k_ r,k_{r+1})\) containing more than one term from \(\ell\). The conjecture (EP) is the following: Let T be an arbitrary system of increasing sequences of positive integers with \(| T| <c\). Then there exists such an increasing sequence of positive integers which is nowhere dense in each sequence of T. The conjecture (EP) and also its negation are consistent with (ZFS). In the paper some consequences of (EP) are established. E.g. under the assumption of (EP) no system S with \(| S| <c\) of series with positive terms is a comparison system.