Cichoń's maximum (Q2320607)

Cichoń's diagram, see also~[\textit{D. H. Fremlin}, Publ. Math. Univ. Pierre Marie Curie 66, Sémin. Initiation Anal. 23ème Année-1983/84, Exp. No. 5, 13 p. (1984; Zbl 0559.03029); \textit{A. Blass}, in: Handbook of set theory. In 3 volumes. Dordrecht: Springer. 395--489 (2010; Zbl 1198.03058)], is a directed graph that shows the relations that are provable, in~\(\mathsf{ZFC}\), between twelve cardinal numbers: \(\aleph_1\), \(2^{\aleph_0}\), \(\mathfrak{b}\), \(\mathfrak{d}\), and the additivity, uniformity, cofinality and covering numbers of the ideals~\(\mathcal{M}\) of meager sets and~\(\mathcal{N}\) of sets of measure zero. There is an important footnote to the diagram: the cofinality of~\(\mathcal{M}\) is the maximum of its uniformity and the cardinal~\(\mathfrak{d}\), and the additivity of~\(\mathcal{M}\) is equal to the minimum of its covering number and the cardinal~\(\mathfrak{b}\).\par If there is no arrow between two cardinals then no relation is provable, that is, both strict inequalities between them are consistent. These consistency results generally assign the value~\(\aleph_1\) to the smaller and~\(\aleph_2\) to the larger cardinal; these values seem unavoidable because the proofs often involve countable-support iterations of proper partial orders and these lead to models with continuum equal to~\(\aleph_2\).\par The present paper a good introduction to the diagram and then goes on to provide a model in which all cardinals in the diagram are distinct, subject to the restriction imposed by the footnote. The construction uses four compact cardinals and involves iterating ccc partial orders via elementary embeddings provided by the compact cardinals.\par The paper shows a two-year interval between submission and revision. In the meantime there has been further progress on finding other linear orders compatible with the diagram, as well as constructions that require fewer or no large cardinals. The authors summarize these results in their final section.