Hereditarily separable groups and monochromatic uniformization (Q1343850)

In this paper an abelian group \(G\) is said to be separable if every finite rank pure subgroup is a free direct summand of \(G\); \(G\) is hereditarily separable if every subgroup of \(G\) is separable. Let \(S\) be a subset of \(\lim (\omega_1)\). If \(\delta \in S\), a ladder on \(\delta\) is a function \(h_\delta:\omega \to \delta\) which is strictly increasing and has range cofinal in \(\delta\). A ladder system on \(S\) is an indexed family \(\eta=\{\eta_\delta:\delta \in S\}\) such that each \(\eta_s\) is a ladder on \(\delta\). The ladder system \(\eta\) is tree-like if whenever \(\eta_\delta(n)=\eta_r (m)\), then \(n=m\) and \(\eta_\delta (k)=\eta_r(k)\) for all \(k < n\). For a cardinal \(\lambda \geq 2\), a \(\lambda\)-coloring of a ladder system \(\eta\) on \(S\) is an indexed family \(c=\{c_\delta:\delta \in S\}\) such that \(c_\delta:\omega \to \lambda\). A uniformization of a coloring \(c\) of a ladder system \(\eta\) on \(S\) is a pair \(\langle g, g^*\rangle\) where \(g:\omega_1 \to \lambda\), \(g^*:S \to \omega\) and for all \(\delta \in S\) and all \(n \geq g^*(\delta)\), \(g(\eta_s(n))=c_\delta (n)\). If such a pair exists, we say that \(c\) can be uniformized. We say that \((\eta, \lambda)\)-uniformization holds or that \(\eta\) satisfies \(\lambda\)-uniformization if every \(\lambda\)-coloring of \(\eta\) can be uniformized. A monochromatic coloring \(c\) of a ladder system \(\eta\) is one such that for each \(\delta \in S\), \(c_\delta\) is a constant function. Consider a monochromatic coloring with \(\lambda\) colors to be a function \(c:S \to \lambda\) which gives the constant value, \(c(\delta)\), of the coloring of \(\eta_\delta\). Then a uniformization of a monochromatic coloring \(c\) is a pair \(\langle f, f^*\rangle\) where for all \(\delta \in S\) and all \(n \geq f^*(\delta)\), \(f(\eta_s (n))=c(\delta)\). If every monochromatic \(\lambda\)-coloring of \(\eta\) can be uniformized we say \(\eta\) satisfies monochromatic uniformization for \(\lambda\) colors. A ladder system \(\eta=\{\eta_\delta:\delta \in S\}\) on \(S\) is said to satisfy monochromatic uniformization for \(\omega\) colors if for every function \(c:S \to \omega\), there is a function \(f: \omega_1 \to \omega\) such that for every \(\delta \in S\), \(f(\eta_\delta (n))=c(\delta)\) for all but finitely many \(n \in \omega\). The main result of this paper is the following: Theorem 1: A necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a non-free hereditarily separable group of cardinality \(\aleph_1\) is the existence of a ladder system on a stationary subset of \(\omega_1\) which satisfies monochromatic uniformization for \(\omega\) colors.