Restrictions on forcings that change cofinalities (Q283096)

This is an interesting and short paper in which the authors prove some results about forcing notions that change the cofinality of cardinals. It is shown that a proper forcing notion (in particular a countably closed forcing notion) can not change the cofinality of a cardinal without collapsing it. This result shows that the use of finite approximations in the definition of forcing notions like Magidor or Radin forcing is somehow reasonable. The main results of the paper show the difference between Prikry forcing which changes the cofinality of a measurable cardinal to \(\omega\), and forcing notions which change the cofinality of some large cardinal to an uncountable regular cardinal. Let \(\kappa\) be a measurable cardinal and let \(U\) be a normal measure on \(\kappa.\) Also, let \(\mathbb{P}_U\) be the corresponding Prikry forcing. As it is well-known, (the Boolean completion of) \(\mathbb{P}_U\) is homogeneous and it adds no bounded subsets to \(\kappa\), while it changes the cofinality of \(\kappa\) to \(\omega\). The authors show that there is no forcing changing the cofinality of a cardinal \(\kappa\) to an uncountable cardinal while having the above two mentioned properties (the results are stated and proved in a more general form). The authors conclude the paper with some questions and conjectures. In particular, it is asked if it is possible to change the cofinality of infinitely many cardinals to a constant cofinality without adding \(\omega\)-sequences.