Asaf Karagila
I don't have much choice...

Posts tagged filters

No uniform ultrafilters

Earlier this morning I received an email question from Yair Hayut. Is it consistent without the axiom of choice, of course, that there are free ultrafilters on the natural numbers but none on the real numbers?

Well, of course that the answer is negative. If \(\cal U\) is a free ultrafilter on \(\omega\) then \(\{X\subseteq\mathcal P(\omega)\mid X\cap\omega\in\cal U\}\) is a free ultrafilter on \(\mathcal P(\omega)\). But that doesn't mean that the question should be trivialized. What Yair asked was actually slightly subtler than that: is it consistent that there are free ultrafilters on \(\omega\), but no uniform ultrafilters on the real numbers?

Continue reading...