Undergraduate Thesis Presentation: Large cardinals and the Kunen inconsistency
Speaker: Rohan Srivastava, Washington University in Saint Louis
Abstract: In this expository talk, I will present some of the basic definitions of set theory—including ordinals, cardinals, ultrafilters, elementary embeddings and inner models—needed to understand the flavor of some large cardinal axioms. I will then present Kunen's original proof that Reinhardt cardinals are inconsistent with ZFC. Along the way, I will discuss connections to the Continuum Hypothesis and Axiom of Choice along with various other philosophical and metamathematical issues that arise in large cardinal analysis.
Host: Karl Schaefer