Building independence relations in abstract elementary classes (Q306573)

The framework of abstract elementary classes (AECs) provides a way of doing model theory without logic. In this area, attempts are made to recover standard model-theoretic results, often assuming extra assumptions on the class. A driving conjecture is Shelah's categoricity conjecture, which is more or less the statement that Morley's theorem holds for AECs. More precisely, it states that if an AEC has a unique model (up to isomorphism) in some uncountable cardinal, then this remains true for some tail of cardinals. In this paper, it is shown how a certain class of AECs possess a nice notion of independence that resembles forking independence from classical model theory and this notion of independence can be used to make progress on Shelah's eventual categoricity conjecture.