Applications of cohomology to set theory. I: Hausdorff gaps (Q1344282)

The author shows how methods from topological algebra can be used to get insight into set-theoretical objects as Hausdorff gaps. He uses ideas which were developed by A. Blass. He starts by introducing the gap cohomology groups and shows that these groups lead to a natural equivalence relation for Hausdorff gaps. As main results of the paper he gives two cardinal estimations for the gap cohomology group. First, he shows that the cardinality of this group is at least \(2^{\aleph_ 0}\). For the second result he needs a new combinatorial hypothesis which generalizes \(\clubsuit\). He shows that it is consistent with \(2^{\aleph_ 1}> 2^{\aleph_ 0}\) that the gap cohomology group has cardinality \(2^{\aleph_ 1}\). Further on the author introduces the notion of an incollapsing gap and shows that the existence of such a gap is independent of ZFC.