Club degrees of rigidity and almost Kurepa trees (Q1935374)

The author investigates strong notions of rigidity for Souslin trees and the relationships between these notions. The first part of the paper addresses the question how badly a rigid Souslin tree can fail to have the unique branch property (saying that forcing with the tree adds precisely one branch). The author constructs a notion of forcing that adds a highly rigid Souslin tree \(T\) with the property that forcing with \(T\) turns \(T\) into a Kurepa tree, i.e. a normal \(\omega_1\)-tree with at least \(\aleph_2\) branches. An \(\omega_1\)-tree with this property is called a Souslin almost Kurepa tree. This construction answers a question raised by the results of the author and \textit{J. D. Hamkins} [J. Symb. Log. 74, No. 2, 423--454 (2009; Zbl 1179.03043)] by showing that there is a huge gap between the unique branch property and certain notions of absolute rigidity. The Souslin tree \(T\) constructed in the above result is rigid and remains rigid after forcing with \(T\). Yet the proof of the result shows that the restriction \(T\restriction \mathrm{Lim}\) of \(T\) to its limit levels has \(\aleph_2\) automorphisms. This observation motivates the investigation of club degrees of rigidity for \(\omega_1\)-trees in the second part of the paper. Given some notion \(P\) of rigidity for \(\omega_1\)-trees, an \(\omega_1\)-tree \(T\) is said to have property \(P\) on clubs if for every club subset \(C\) of \(\omega_1\) containing \(0\), the restriction \(T\restriction C\) of \(T\) to levels in \(C\) has property \(P\). The author considers the club degrees of several notions of rigidity introduced in [loc. cit.] and proves a number of results about the relationships between them, and between the club and the non-club degrees.