More Set-theory around the weak Freese-Nation property

In this paper, we introduce a very weak square principle which is even weaker than the similar principle introduced by Foreman and Magidor. A characterization of this principle is given in term of sequences of elementary submodels of H(\chi). This is used in turn to prove a characterization of kappa-Freese-Nation property under the very weak square principle and a weak variant of the Singular Cardinals Hypothesis. A typical application of this characterization shows that under 2^{\aleph_0}<\aleph_\omega and our very weak square for \aleph_\omega, the partial ordering [omega_\omega]^{<\omega} (ordered by inclusion) has the aleph_1-Freese-Nation property. On the other hand we show that, under Chang's Conjecture for \aleph_\omega the partial ordering above does not have the aleph_1-Freese-Nation property. Hence we obtain the independence of our characterization of the kappa-Freese-Nation property and also of the very weak square principle from ZFC

Sticks and clubs

We study combinatorial principles known as stick and club. Several variants of these principles and cardinal invariants connected to them are also considered. We introduce a new kind of side-by-side product of partial orders which we call pseudo-product. Using such products, we give several generic extensions where some of these principles hold together with not CH and Martin's Axiom for countable p.o.-sets. An iterative version of the pseudo-product is used under an inaccessible cardinal to show the consistency of the club principle for every stationary subset of limits of omega_1 together with not CH and Martin's Axiom for countable p.o.-sets

Partial orderings with the weak Freese-Nation property

A partial ordering P is said to have the weak Freese-Nation property (WFN) if there is a mapping f:P ---> [P]^{<= aleph_0} such that, for any a, b in P, if a <= b then there exists c in f(a) cap f(b) such that a <= c <= b. In this note, we study the WFN and some of its generalizations. Some features of the class of BAs with the WFN seem to be quite sensitive to additional axioms of set theory: e.g., under CH, every ccc cBA has this property while, under b >= aleph_2, there exists no cBA with the WFN

A game on partial orderings

We study the determinacy of the game G_kappa (A) introduced in [FKSh:549] for uncountable regular kappa and several classes of partial orderings A. Among trees or Boolean algebras, we can always find an A such that G_kappa (A) is undetermined. For the class of linear orders, the existence of such A depends on the size of kappa^{< kappa}. In particular we obtain a characterization of kappa^{< kappa}= kappa in terms of determinacy of the game G_kappa (L) for linear orders L