Cardinal Arithmetic: From Silver’s Theorem to Shelah’s PCF Theory

Abstract

The main goal of this master’s thesis is to give a detailed description of the major ZFC advances in cardinal arithmetic from Silver’s Theorem to Shelah’s pcf theory and his bound on 2אω. In our attempt to make this thesis as self-contained as possible, we have devoted the first chapter to review the most elementary concepts of set theory, which include all the classical results from the first period of developement of cardinal arithmetic, from 1870 to 1930, due to Cantor, Hausdorff, König, and Tarski.