We formulate and prove (in ZFC) a strong coloring theorem which holds at successors of singular cardinals, and use it to answer several questions concerning Shelah's principle $Pr_1(\mu^+,\mu^+,\mu^+,cf(\mu))$ for singular $\mu$.

We prove that colouring of pairs from 2 with strong properties exists. The easiest to state problem it solves is: there are two topological spaces with cellularity 1 whose product has cellularity 2; equivalently, we can speak of cellularity of Boolean algebras or of Boolean algebras satisfying the 2-c.c. whose product fails the 2-c.c. We also deal more with guessing of clubs.

We establish a coloring theorem for successors of singular cardinals, and use it prove that for any such cardinal $\mu$, we have $\mu^+\nrightarrow[\mu^+]^2_{\mu^+}$ if and only if $\mu^+\nrightarrow[\mu^+]^2_{\theta}$ for arbitrarily large $\theta < \mu$.

Motivated by a characterization of weakly compact cardinals due to Todorcevic, we introduce a new cardinal characteristic, the C-sequence number, which can be seen as a measure of the compactness of a regular uncountable cardinal. We prove a number of ZFC and independence results about the C-sequence number and its relationship with large cardinals, stationary reflection, and square principles. We then introduce and study the more general C-sequence spectrum and uncover some tight connections between the C-sequence spectrum and the strong (...) coloring principle U(. . .), introduced in Part I of this series. (shrink)

We obtain very strong coloring theorems at successors of singular cardinals from failures of certain instances of simultaneous reflection of stationary sets. In particular, the simplest of our results establishes that if μ is singular and , then there is a regular cardinal θ<μ such that any fewer than cf stationary subsets of must reflect simultaneously.

Abstract.We investigate the existence of strong colorings on successors of singular cardinals. This work continues Section 2 of [1], but now our emphasis is on finding colorings of pairs of ordinals, rather than colorings of finite sets of ordinals.

We prove for any $\mu = \mu^{ large enough (just strongly inaccessible Mahlo) the consistency of 2 μ = λ → [θ] 2 3 and even 2 μ = λ → [θ] 2 σ,2 for $\sigma . The new point is that possibly $\theta > \mu^+$.

We prove the consistency of: if B 1 , B 2 are Boolean algebras satisfying the c.c.c. and the 2 ℵo -c.c. respectively then B 1 × B 2 satisfies the 2 ℵo -c.c. We start with a universe with a Ramsey cardinal.

In this paper, we investigate the extent to which techniques used in [10], [2], and [3]—developed to prove coloring theorems at successors of singular cardinals of uncountable cofinality—can be extended to cover the countable cofinality case.