Forking in short and tame abstract elementary classes (Q529160)

The paper under review (versions of which have been circulating on arXiv since 2013) describes global nonforking independence in the general framework of abstract elementary classes. Specifically, the authors investigate for a fixed cardinal \(\kappa\) the relation ``\(p\) does not fork over \(M\)'', where \(p\) is a Galois (orbital type) over a model \(N\), \(M\) is a \(\kappa\)-saturated strong substructure of \(M\), and nonforking means that for every substructure \(N_0\) of \(N\) of size less than \(\kappa\), the restriction of \(p\) to \(N_0\) is realized inside \(M\) (that is, it is a ``\(\kappa\)-coheir'' over \(M\)). The authors prove that this defines a stable-like nonforking notion under appropriate hypotheses, involving amalgamation, the failure of the order property, a certain extension property for nonforking, and a strong locality property for Galois types (called full tameness and shortness). This is a generalization of the work of \textit{M. Makkai} and \textit{S. Shelah} who carried out a similar program for the class of models of an \(L_{\kappa, \omega}\)-sentence, \(\kappa\) a strongly compact cardinal [ibid. 47, No. 1, 41--97 (1990; Zbl 0704.03015)]. Indeed, the authors show that large cardinals axioms imply some of their hypotheses (notably the extension property and by earlier work of the first author [J. Sym. Logic 79, No. 4, 1092--1119 (2014; Zbl 1353.03023)] full tameness and shortness), recovering the Makkai-Shelah result [loc. cit.] as a special case. After the paper under review was circulated, it was shown [the authors et al., Ann. Pure Appl. Logic 167, No. 7, 590--613 (2016; Zbl 1400.03060)] that the nonforking relation described there is canonical. That is, it is the only one satisfying the fundamental properties of nonforking in a stable theory: extension, stationarity, and local character. Further study by the reviewer, for example in [Arch. Math. Logic 55, No. 3--4, 567--592 (2016; Zbl 1343.03028)] weakens the assumptions in some (but not all) of the results of the present paper. In particular, the extension property is rarely needed.