Ultrafilters with property (s)

Arnold W. Miller

Published 2003-10-28Version 1

A set X which is a subset of the Cantor set has property (s) (Marczewski (Spzilrajn)) iff for every perfect set P there exists a perfect set Q contained in P such that Q is a subset of X or Q is disjoint from X. Suppose U is a nonprincipal ultrafilter on omega. It is not difficult to see that if U is preserved by Sacks forcing, i.e., it generates an ultrafilter in the generic extension after forcing with the partial order of perfect sets, then U has property (s) in the ground model. It is known that selective ultrafilters or even P-points are preserved by Sacks forcing. On the other hand (answering a question raised by Hrusak) we show that assuming CH (or more generally MA for ctble posets) there exists an ultrafilter U with property (s) such that U does not generate an ultrafilter in any extension which adds a new subset of omega. http://www.math.wisc.edu/~miller/res/index.html miller@math.wisc.edu