How statement and proof provenance work
The first chip identifies the source of the statement or construction; the second identifies the source of its local proof or verification.
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These labels describe origin, not correctness: citations and verification chips remain separate evidence.
Disjoint union, cartesian product, function space and power set respect equinumerosity, and for ordinals the sets and carry explicit well-orders, so their cardinalities exist in ZF
Statement
For sets and write
so is the disjoint union, made disjoint by tagging, and is the set of all functions from to . Work in ZF. Then:
(a) Representative independence. If and (Equinumerous sets, and ) then
(b) Power sets. If then .
(c) Two operations are choice-free. For ordinals and (Ordinal (von Neumann)) the sets and carry explicitly defined well-orders (Well-order and well-ordered set), so each is equinumerous with an ordinal and each has a cardinality , in ZF (A set equinumerous with some ordinal has a least such ordinal, that ordinal is a cardinal, and equinumerous sets get the same one; no choice principle is used).
(d) The third is not. Nothing here well-orders , and no argument on this page does. Assuming the Axiom of Choice (The Axiom of Choice) every set is well-orderable (The well-ordering theorem) and has a cardinality like any other set; that is where cardinal exponentiation gets its hypothesis.
Facts & Assumptions
Given: Sets and ordinals , in ZF. No choice principle is assumed except where the Axiom of Choice is named.
A set is well-orderable if and only if it is equinumerous with an ordinal; it then has a least such ordinal , which is a cardinal, and equinumerous sets receive the same one (A set equinumerous with some ordinal has a least such ordinal, that ordinal is a cardinal, and equinumerous sets get the same one; no choice principle is used, Cardinal (initial ordinal) and cardinality).
A well-order is a relation that is irreflexive, transitive, trichotomous, and such that every nonempty subset has a least element (Well-order and well-ordered set).
Every set of ordinals is well ordered by , and every nonempty set of ordinals has an -least element (Trichotomy and well-ordering of the ordinals).
A composition of bijections is a bijection, the inverse of a bijection is a bijection, and a function with a two-sided inverse is a bijection (Injection, surjection, bijection).
means that a bijection exists, and it is reflexive, symmetric and transitive (Equinumerous sets, and ).
Every element of an ordinal is an ordinal and (Basic closure properties of ordinals, Ordinal (von Neumann)).
Assuming the Axiom of Choice, every set carries a well-order (The Axiom of Choice, The well-ordering theorem).
Proof
Fix bijections and ; these exist by [L5], and everything below is built from them, so nothing is chosen beyond one bijection for each of the two hypotheses.
The map with and has the two-sided inverse built the same way from and , hence is a bijection.
The map , , has the two-sided inverse , hence is a bijection.
The map , , lands in and has the two-sided inverse , since and symmetrically; so it is a bijection and claim (a) holds.
Claim (b): if is a bijection then maps to with two-sided inverse , hence is a bijection.
On define to hold when , or and ; this is irreflexive, transitive and trichotomous by [L6] and [L3], and a nonempty has a -least element, namely with the -least having when such a exists, and with the -least such otherwise.
On define to hold when , or and ; the same three properties hold by [L3] and [L6], and a nonempty has -least element where is the -least first coordinate occurring in and is the -least with ; both are least elements of nonempty sets of ordinals, so neither is chosen.
Assuming the Axiom of Choice, carries a well-order by [L7] and therefore has a cardinality by [L1]; this is claim (d), and no step above supplies such a well-order in ZF.
By [L1] applied to the well-orders of steps 1.6 and 1.7, each of and is equinumerous with an ordinal and so has a cardinality in ZF, which is claim (c).
Together: , , the function space and the power set all respect , the first two have ZF cardinalities on ordinal arguments, and the function space is given one by the Axiom of Choice.
Remarks
Why the disjoint union is tagged. is not an invariant of and : taking and gives and , which are not equinumerous. Tagging with and makes the two blocks disjoint whatever the sets were, and claim (a) is then true as stated. This is why the operation defined on this page is and never .
The lexicographic order is not the order used for Hessenberg's theorem. Step 1.7 well-orders , which is everything claim (c) asks for. Its order type is in general much larger than : the lexicographic order on has order type . The proof that for infinite uses a different, cleverer well-order and is Hessenberg: for every infinite cardinal , proved in ZF from the canonical well-order of .
Where the asymmetry between and exponentiation comes from. A product of two well-ordered sets is well-ordered by an order written down from the two given ones. A set of functions between well-ordered sets has no such canonical order: the obvious candidates need a choice at each argument. That is not a defect of this proof but the reason general cardinal exponentiation is stated with the Axiom of Choice on this page; the exponential unit laws (Commutativity, associativity, distributivity and monotonicity of and , the unit laws, the two exponent laws, and if and only if injects into ) and the finite case (Every natural number and are cardinals, every infinite cardinal is a limit ordinal, and on the natural numbers the cardinal operations are the published finite counting operations, with in the finite sense equal to in the cardinal sense) are choice-free, because the function sets they count carry a canonical well-order.
Depends on
- A set equinumerous with some ordinal has a least such ordinal, that ordinal is a cardinal, and equinumerous sets get the same one; no choice principle is used
- Equinumerous sets, $A \approx B$ and $A \preceq B$
- Injection, surjection, bijection
- Well-order and well-ordered set
- Ordinal (von Neumann)
- Trichotomy and well-ordering of the ordinals
- Basic closure properties of ordinals
- Cardinal (initial ordinal) and cardinality
- The well-ordering theorem
- The Axiom of Choice
Used by
- Cardinal sum κ ⊕ λ, product κ ⊗ λ and exponentiation κ^λ, and why they are written apart from the ordinal operations Definition
- The sum ∑_i ∈ I κᵢ and the product ∏_i ∈ I κᵢ of an indexed family of cardinals, defined under the Axiom of Choice Definition
- Assuming the Axiom of Choice: ℵ₀^ℵ₀ = 2^ℵ₀ and | ℝ^ℝ | = 2^2^ℵ₀, computed from the exponent laws and Hessenberg Example
- ℝ ≈ P(ℕ) in ZF, by the Cantor set for one injection and by the cuts {q ∈ ℚ : q < x} for the other; so | ℝ | = 2^ℵ₀ under the Axiom of Choice Example
- Under choice, the Niemytzki plane is Tychonoff and locally metrizable but not normal, paracompact, or metrizable Example
- Commutativity, associativity, distributivity and monotonicity of ⊕ and ⊗, the unit laws, the two exponent laws, and κ ≤ λ if and only if κ injects into λ Lemma
- What each result on this page costs in choice, and where the continuum escapes what ZFC can decide Remark
- Assuming the Axiom of Choice, 2^κ = | P(κ) |, and Cantor's theorem in cardinal form: κ < 2^κ Theorem
- Hessenberg: κ ⊗ κ = κ for every infinite cardinal κ, proved in ZF from the canonical well-order of κ × κ Theorem
- Tarski: the Axiom of Choice is equivalent to the statement that A × A ≈ A for every infinite set A, so extending Hessenberg's theorem from the alephs to arbitrary sets is exactly as strong as choice Theorem
Dependency tree · next 3 levels
Direct dependencies and their dependencies through the next three levels: 63 results over 23 levels. An arrow runs from a result to what uses it, and this result sits at the bottom with a heavier outline. Click the chart to enlarge it.
Sources
- P. Koellner, Set Theory: The Independence Phenomenon, Ch. 3 (standard reference, not scraped)
- Cardinal number (Wikipedia) (standard reference, not scraped)
- T. Jech, Set Theory, 3rd millennium ed., Ch. 3 (Cardinal numbers) (standard reference, not scraped)