Successor Cardinal
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set theory Set theory is the branch of mathematical logic that studies sets, which can be informally described as collections of objects. Although objects of any kind can be collected into a set, set theory, as a branch of mathematics, is mostly conce ...
, one can define a successor operation on
cardinal number In mathematics, cardinal numbers, or cardinals for short, are a generalization of the natural numbers used to measure the cardinality (size) of sets. The cardinality of a finite set is a natural number: the number of elements in the set. Th ...
s in a similar way to the successor operation on the
ordinal number In set theory, an ordinal number, or ordinal, is a generalization of ordinal numerals (first, second, th, etc.) aimed to extend enumeration to infinite sets. A finite set can be enumerated by successively labeling each element with the least n ...
s. The cardinal successor coincides with the ordinal successor for finite cardinals, but in the infinite case they diverge because every infinite ordinal and its successor have the same
cardinality In mathematics, the cardinality of a set is a measure of the number of elements of the set. For example, the set A = \ contains 3 elements, and therefore A has a cardinality of 3. Beginning in the late 19th century, this concept was generalized ...
(a
bijection In mathematics, a bijection, also known as a bijective function, one-to-one correspondence, or invertible function, is a function between the elements of two sets, where each element of one set is paired with exactly one element of the other s ...
can be set up between the two by simply sending the last element of the successor to 0, 0 to 1, etc., and fixing ω and all the elements above; in the style of Hilbert's Hotel Infinity). Using the
von Neumann cardinal assignment The von Neumann cardinal assignment is a cardinal assignment that uses ordinal numbers. For a well-orderable set ''U'', we define its cardinal number to be the smallest ordinal number equinumerous to ''U'', using the von Neumann definition of an or ...
and the
axiom of choice In mathematics, the axiom of choice, or AC, is an axiom of set theory equivalent to the statement that ''a Cartesian product of a collection of non-empty sets is non-empty''. Informally put, the axiom of choice says that given any collectio ...
(AC), this successor operation is easy to define: for a cardinal number ''κ'' we have :\kappa^+ = \left, \inf \\ , where ON is the
class Class or The Class may refer to: Common uses not otherwise categorized * Class (biology), a taxonomic rank * Class (knowledge representation), a collection of individuals or objects * Class (philosophy), an analytical concept used differentl ...
of ordinals. That is, the successor cardinal is the cardinality of the least ordinal into which a set of the given cardinality can be mapped one-to-one, but which cannot be mapped one-to-one back into that set. That the set above is nonempty follows from Hartogs' theorem, which says that for any
well-order In mathematics, a well-order (or well-ordering or well-order relation) on a set ''S'' is a total order on ''S'' with the property that every non-empty subset of ''S'' has a least element in this ordering. The set ''S'' together with the well-orde ...
able cardinal, a larger such cardinal is constructible. The minimum actually exists because the ordinals are well-ordered. It is therefore immediate that there is no cardinal number in between ''κ'' and ''κ''+. A successor cardinal is a cardinal that is ''κ''+ for some cardinal ''κ''. In the infinite case, the successor operation skips over many ordinal numbers; in fact, every infinite cardinal is a
limit ordinal In set theory, a limit ordinal is an ordinal number that is neither zero nor a successor ordinal. Alternatively, an ordinal λ is a limit ordinal if there is an ordinal less than λ, and whenever β is an ordinal less than λ, then there exists an ...
. Therefore, the successor operation on cardinals gains a lot of power in the infinite case (relative the ordinal successorship operation), and consequently the cardinal numbers are a very "sparse" subclass of the ordinals. We define the sequence of alephs (via the
axiom of replacement In set theory, the axiom schema of replacement is a schema of axioms in Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory (ZF) that asserts that the image of any set under any definable mapping is also a set. It is necessary for the construction of certain infinite ...
) via this operation, through all the ordinal numbers as follows: :\aleph_0 = \omega :\aleph_ = \aleph_^+ and for ''λ'' an infinite limit ordinal, :\aleph_ = \bigcup_ \aleph_\beta If ''β'' is a
successor ordinal In set theory, the successor of an ordinal number ''α'' is the smallest ordinal number greater than ''α''. An ordinal number that is a successor is called a successor ordinal. Properties Every ordinal other than 0 is either a successor ordin ...
, then \aleph_ is a successor cardinal. Cardinals that are not successor cardinals are called
limit cardinal In mathematics, limit cardinals are certain cardinal numbers. A cardinal number ''λ'' is a weak limit cardinal if ''λ'' is neither a successor cardinal nor zero. This means that one cannot "reach" ''λ'' from another cardinal by repeated succes ...
s; and by the above definition, if ''λ'' is a limit ordinal, then \aleph_ is a limit cardinal. The standard definition above is restricted to the case when the cardinal can be well-ordered, i.e. is finite or an aleph. Without the axiom of choice, there are cardinals that cannot be well-ordered. Some mathematicians have defined the successor of such a cardinal as the cardinality of the least ordinal that cannot be mapped one-to-one into a set of the given cardinality. That is: :\kappa^+ = \left, \inf \\ which is the
Hartogs number In mathematics, specifically in axiomatic set theory, a Hartogs number is an ordinal number associated with a set. In particular, if ''X'' is any set, then the Hartogs number of ''X'' is the least ordinal α such that there is no injection from α ...
of ''κ''.


See also

*
Cardinal assignment In set theory, the concept of cardinality is significantly developable without recourse to actually defining cardinal numbers as objects in the theory itself (this is in fact a viewpoint taken by Frege; Frege cardinals are basically equivalence cla ...


References

*
Paul Halmos Paul Richard Halmos ( hu, Halmos Pál; March 3, 1916 – October 2, 2006) was a Hungarian-born American mathematician and statistician who made fundamental advances in the areas of mathematical logic, probability theory, statistics, operator ...
, ''Naive set theory''. Princeton, NJ: D. Van Nostrand Company, 1960. Reprinted by Springer-Verlag, New York, 1974. (Springer-Verlag edition). * Jech, Thomas, 2003. ''Set Theory: The Third Millennium Edition, Revised and Expanded''. Springer. . * Kunen, Kenneth, 1980. ''Set Theory: An Introduction to Independence Proofs''. Elsevier. . {{Mathematical logic Cardinal numbers Set theory