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A Shelah group in ZFC

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2025

Márk Poór
Affiliation:
Einstein Institute of Mathematics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Edmond J. Safra Campus, Givat Ram, Jerusalem, 91904, Israel; E-mail: [email protected]
Assaf Rinot*
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics, Bar-Ilan University, Max and Anna Webb street, Ramat Gan, 5290002, Israel; URL: http://www.assafrinot.com;
*
E-mail: [email protected] (corresponding author)

Abstract

In a paper from 1980, Shelah constructed an uncountable group all of whose proper subgroups are countable. Assuming the continuum hypothesis, he constructed an uncountable group G that moreover admits an integer n satisfying that for every uncountable $X\subseteq G$, every element of G may be written as a group word of length n in the elements of X. The former is called a Jónsson group, and the latter is called a Shelah group.

In this paper, we construct a Shelah group on the grounds of $\textsf {{ZFC}}$ alone – that is, without assuming the continuum hypothesis. More generally, we identify a combinatorial condition (coming from the theories of negative square-bracket partition relations and strongly unbounded subadditive maps) sufficient for the construction of a Shelah group of size $\kappa $, and we prove that the condition holds true for all successors of regular cardinals (such as $\kappa =\aleph _1,\aleph _2,\aleph _3,\ldots $). This also yields the first consistent example of a Shelah group of size a limit cardinal.

Type
Foundations
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press

1 Introduction

For a prime number p, the Prüfer p-group

$$ \begin{align*}\{x\in \mathbb C\mathrel{|} \exists n\in\mathbb N\,(x^{p^n}=1)\}\end{align*} $$

is an example of an infinite subgroup of $(\mathbb C,\cdot )$ all of whose proper subgroups are finite. In [Reference Ol’šanskiĭ33], Ol’šanskiĭ constructed finitely generated non-cyclic infinite groups in which every nontrivial proper subgroup is a finite cyclic group (the Tarski monsters). In [Reference Shelah40], answering a question of Kurosh, Shelah constructed an uncountable group in which every nontrivial proper subgroup is countable. All of those are examples of so-called Jónsson groups (i.e., an infinite group G having no proper subgroups of full size). An even more striking concept is that of a boundedly-Jónsson group – that is, a group G admitting a positive integer n such that for every $X\subseteq G$ of full size, it is the case that $X^n=G$ (i.e., every element of G may be written as a group word of length exactly n in the elements of X). In [Reference Shelah40], Shelah constructed a boundedly-Jónsson group of size $\aleph _1$ with the aid of Continuum Hypothesis ( $\textsf {{CH}}$ ). More generally, Shelah proved that $2^\lambda =\lambda ^+$ yields a boundedly-Jónsson group of size $\lambda ^+$ . By now, the concept of boundedly-Jónsson groups is named after him:

Definition 1.1. A group G is n-Shelah if $X^n=G$ for every $X\subseteq G$ of full size.

A group is Shelah if it is n-Shelah for some positive integer n.

Along the years, variations of this concept were studied quite intensively, and from various angles. A group G is said to be Cayley bounded with respect to a subset $S\subseteq G$ if there exists a positive integer $n_S$ such that $G=\bigcup _{i=1}^{n_S}(S\cup S^{-1})^i$ (i.e., every element of G may be written as a group word of length at most $n_S$ in the elements of S and inverses of elements of S). Extending the work of Macpherson and Neumann [Reference Macpherson and Neumann30], Bergman proved [Reference Bergman4] that the permutation group $\operatorname {\mathrm {Sym}}(\Omega )$ of an infinite set $\Omega $ is Cayley bounded with respect to all of its generating sets. Soon after, the notion Bergman property was coined as the assertion of being Cayley bounded with respect to all generating sets. Since then, it has received a lot of attention; see [Reference Bardakov, Tolstykh and Vershinin3, Reference Droste and Göbel10, Reference Droste and Holland11, Reference Droste, Holland and Ulbrich12, Reference Droste and Truss13, Reference Maltcev, Mitchell and Ruškuc31, Reference Ricard and Rosendal35, Reference Thomas and Zapletal44, Reference Tolstykh46, Reference Tolstykh47]. More recent examples include the work of Dowerk [Reference Dowerk9] on von Neumann algebras with unitary groups possessing the property of n-strong uncountable cofinality (i.e., having a common Cayley bound n for all generating sets, and the group is not the union of an infinite countable strictly increasing sequence of subgroups), and Shelah’s work on locally finite groups [Reference Shelah42]. It is worth mentioning that the notion of strong uncountable cofinality has also geometric reformulations (e.g., by Cornulier [Reference de Cornulier8], Pestov (see [Reference Rosendal38, Theorem 1.2]) and Rosendal [Reference Rosendal38, Proposition 3.3]).

Shelah’s 1980 construction from $\textsf {{CH}}$ was of a $6640$ -Shelah group. It left open two independent questions:Footnote 1

  1. 1. Can $\textsf {{CH}}$ be used to construct an n-Shelah group for a small number of n?

  2. 2. Is $\textsf {{CH}}$ necessary for the construction of an n-Shelah group?

Recently, in [Reference Banakh2], Banakh addressed the first question, using $\textsf {{CH}}$ to construct a $36$ -Shelah group. Even more recently, Corson, Ol’šanskiĭ and Varghese [Reference Corson, Olshanskii and Varghese7] addressed the second question, constructing the first $\textsf {{ZFC}}$ example of a Jónsson group of size $\aleph _1$ to have the Bergman property. Unfortunately, the new example stops short from being Shelah, as every generating set S of this group has its own $n_S$ . In this paper, an affirmative answer to the second question is finally given, where a Shelah group of size $\aleph _1$ is constructed within $\textsf {{ZFC}}$ .

Theorem A. For every infinite regular cardinal $\lambda $ , there exists a $10120$ -Shelah group of size $\lambda ^+$ . In particular, there exist Shelah groups of size $\aleph _1,\aleph _2,\aleph _3,\ldots $ .

The proof of Theorem A reflects advances both in small cancellation theory and in the study of infinite Ramsey theory. Towards it, we prove a far-reaching extension of Hesse’s amalgamation lemma, and we obtain two maps, one coming from the theory of negative square-bracket partition relations and the other coming from the theory of strongly subadditive functions, and the two maps have the property that they may be triggered simultaneously, making them ‘active’ over each other.

The connection to infinite Ramsey theory should not come as a surprise. First, note that an n-Shelah group of size $\aleph _0$ does not exist, since such a group would have induced a coloring $c:[\mathbb N]^n\rightarrow k$ for a large enough integer k admitting no infinite homogeneous set,Footnote 2 in particular contradicting Ramsey’s theorem $\aleph _0\rightarrow (\aleph _0)^n_k$ .Footnote 3

A deeper connection to (additive) Ramsey theory is in the fact that the existence of a Jónsson group of size $\kappa $ is equivalent to a very strong failure of the higher analog of Hindman’s finite sums theorem [Reference Hindman21]. Indeed, by [Reference Fernandez-Breton and Rinot16, Corollary 2.8], if there exists a Jónsson group of size $\kappa $ , then for every Abelian group G of size $\kappa $ , there exists a map $c:G\rightarrow G$ such that for every $X\subseteq G$ of full size, $c\restriction \operatorname {\mathrm {FS}}(X)$ is surjective; that is,

$$ \begin{align*}\{ c(x_1+\cdots+x_n)\mathrel{|} n\in\mathbb N,~\{x_1,\ldots,x_n\}\in[X]^n\}=G.\end{align*} $$

Conversely, if G is an Abelian group of size $\kappa $ admitting a map $c:G\rightarrow G$ as above, then the structure $(G,+,c)$ is easily an example of a so-called Jónsson algebra [Reference Jónsson24] of size $\kappa $ , which by Corson’s work [Reference Corson6] implies the existence of a Jónsson group of size $\kappa $ .

The fact that the elimination of $\textsf {{CH}}$ goes through advances in the theory of partition calculus of uncountable cardinals should not come as a surprise, either. To give just one example, we mention that three decades after Juhász and Hajnal [Reference Hajnal and Juhász19] constructed an L-space with the aid of $\textsf {{CH}}$ , Moore [Reference Moore32] gave a $\textsf {{ZFC}}$ construction of an L-space by establishing a new unbalanced partition relation for the first uncountable cardinal.

Having discussed Shelah groups of size $\aleph _0$ and of size a successor cardinal, the next question is whether it is possible to construct a Shelah group of size an uncountable limit cardinal. To compare, a natural ingredient available for transfinite constructions of length a successor cardinal $\kappa =\lambda ^+$ is the existence of $\lambda $ -filtrations of all ordinals less than $\kappa $ . We overcome this obstruction at the level of a limit cardinal $\kappa $ by employing subadditive strongly unbounded maps $d:[\kappa ]^2\rightarrow \lambda $ having arbitrarily large gaps between $\lambda $ and $\kappa $ . This way, we obtain the first consistent example of a Shelah group of size a limit cardinal. More generally:

Theorem B. For every regular uncountable cardinal $\kappa $ satisfying the combinatorial principle $\square (\kappa )$ , there exists a Shelah group of size $\kappa $ .

By a seminal work of Jensen [Reference Jensen23], in Gödel’s model of set theory known as the constructible universe [Reference Gödel18], the combinatorial principle $\square (\kappa )$ holds for every regular uncountable cardinal $\kappa $ that is not weakly compact. As the reader may anticipate, a cardinal $\kappa $ is weakly compact if it is a regular uncountable cardinal satisfying the higher analog of Ramsey’s theorem $\kappa \rightarrow (\kappa )^2_2$ . Altogether, we arrive at the following optimal result:

Theorem C. In Gödel’s constructible universe, for every regular uncountable cardinal $\kappa $ , the following are equivalent:

  • There exists a Shelah group of size $\kappa $ ;

  • Ramsey’s partition relation $\kappa \rightarrow (\kappa )^2_2$ fails.

We conclude the introduction by discussing additional features that the groups constructed here possess. A group is said to be topologizable if it admits a non-discrete Hausdorff group topology; otherwise, it is non-topologizable. The first consistent instance of a non-topologizable group was the group constructed by Shelah in [Reference Shelah40] using $\textsf {{CH}}$ . Shortly after, an uncountable $\textsf {{ZFC}}$ example was given by Hesse [Reference Hesse20]. Then a countable such group was given by Ol’šanskiĭ [Reference Ol’šanskiĭ34, Theorem 31.5] (an account of his construction may be found in [Reference Adian1, §13.4]). Ol’šanskiĭ’s group is periodic; a torsion-free example was given by Klyachko and Trofimov in [Reference Klyachko and Trofimov25].

The Shelah group we construct in this paper is torsion-free and non-topologizable. The latter follows combining the property of Shelah-ness together with the fact that there will be a filtration of the group consisting of malnormal subgroups (see Definition 3.3). Moreover, our group contains a nonalgebraic unconditionally closed set, which can be shown by proving that small sets can be covered by a topologizable subgroup, similarly to the argument by Sipacheva [Reference Sipacheva43, Lemmas 1 and A.4].

1.1 Can’t you do better than $n=10120$ ?

We believe a better n is achievable, but that is not the focus of this paper. In this paper, we establish a two-dimensional construction scheme for producing a group G of cardinality $\kappa $ as a limit of a coherent system of subgroups $\langle G_{\gamma ,i}\mathrel {|} \gamma <\kappa ,~i<\theta \rangle $ , where $G_{\gamma +1,i+1}$ is obtained as a particular amalgamation of the groups $G_{\gamma ,i}$ and $G_{\gamma ,i+1}$ over $G_{\gamma +1,i}$ . The number $n=10120$ comes from our amalgamation lemma, and so by plugging in alternative amalgamation lemmas to our construction scheme, we expect groups of various characteristics may be produced, including n-Shelah groups with $n<10120$ .

1.2 Organization of this paper

In Section 2, we fix our notations and conventions, and provide some necessary background from small cancellation theory.

In Section 3, we prove an amalgamation lemma that will serve as a building block in our two-dimensional recursive construction of a Shelah group.

In Section 4, we provide set-theoretic sufficient conditions for the existence of two types of maps to exist, and moreover be active over each other. The first type comes from the classical theory of negative square-bracket partition relations [Reference Erdős, Hajnal and Rado14, §18], and enables to eliminate the need for $\textsf {{CH}}$ in the construction of a Shelah group of size $\aleph _1$ . The second type comes from the theory of subadditive strongly unbounded functions [Reference Lambie-Hanson and Rinot28], and enables to push the construction to higher cardinals including limit cardinals. At the level of successors of regulars, both of these colorings are obtained in $\textsf {{ZFC}}$ using the method of walks on ordinals [Reference Todorcevic45] that did not exist at the time Shelah’s paper [Reference Shelah40] was written.

In Section 5, we provide a transfinite construction of a Shelah group guided by the colorings given by Section 4, and using the amalgamation lemma of Section 3.

2 Preliminaries

2.1 Notations and conventions

Under ordinals, we always mean von Neumann ordinals, and for a set X, the symbol $|X|$ always refers to the smallest ordinal with the same cardinality. For a set X, the symbol $\mathcal P(X)$ denotes the power set of X, while if $\theta $ is a cardinal, we use the standard notation $[X]^\theta $ for $\{Y \in \mathcal P(X)\mathrel {|} |Y| = \theta \}$ – similarly for $[X]^{<\theta }$ and $[X]^{\leq \theta }$ . We let $\mathcal H_\theta $ denote the collection of all sets of hereditary cardinality less than $\theta $ . A set D is a club in a cardinal $\kappa $ iff $D\subseteq \kappa $ and for every $\epsilon <\kappa $ , $\sup (D\cap \epsilon )\in D\cup \{0\}$ and $D\setminus \epsilon \neq \emptyset $ . For a function f and a subset $A\subseteq \operatorname {\mathrm {dom}}(f)$ , we either write $f[A]$ or $f"A$ for $\{ f(a)\mathrel {|} a\in A\}$ . By a sequence, we mean a function on an ordinal, where for a sequence $ \overline {s}= \langle s_\alpha \mathrel {|} \alpha < \operatorname {\mathrm {dom}}(\overline {s}) \rangle $ , the length of $\overline {s}$ (in symbols $\ell (\overline {s})$ ) denotes $\operatorname {\mathrm {dom}}(\overline {s})$ . We denote the empty sequence by $\langle \rangle $ . For a set X and an ordinal $\alpha $ , we use $^\alpha X = \{ \overline {s}\mathrel {|} \ell (\overline {s}) = \alpha ,~\operatorname {\mathrm {Im}}(\overline {s}) \subseteq X\}$ .

2.2 Small cancellation theory

The main algebraic tool we are going to use is small cancellation theory. In this regard, the paper is self-contained, but for more details and proofs, the interested reader can consult [Reference Lyndon and Schupp29, §5. 11] and [Reference Shelah40, §1].

By convention, the free group with a set of generators A is denoted here by $F_A$ , and the normal closure of a set S in a group G is denoted here by $\operatorname {\mathrm {ncl}}(S,G)$ .

Definition 2.1. Given groups $H,K,L$ such that $K\cap L = H$ (as sets) – in particular, $H \leq K,L$ – then one constructs the free amalgamation of K and L over H as

$$\begin{align*}K *_H L = F_{K \cup L} / N, \end{align*}$$

where $N = \operatorname {\mathrm {ncl}}(E_K \cup E_L,F_{K \cup L})$ , and for $G \in \{K,L\}$ ,

$$\begin{align*}E_G = \{g_1g_2g_3^{-1}\mathrel{|} g_1,g_2,g_3 \in G, ~g_1g_2 = g_3\}.\end{align*}$$

We invoke basic results about the structure of groups of the form $ K *_H L $ .

Definition 2.2. If $g = g^*_0 g^*_1 \cdots g^*_{n-1} \in K *_H L$ , where $g^*_i \in K \cup L$ , then we call the sequence of $g^*_i$ ’s the canonical form of the group element of g, if

  • either $n = 1$ , or

  • $n>1$ , and for each $i<n$

    1. (1) $g^*_i \notin H$ ,

    2. (2) $i+1 <n \to $ ( $g^*_i \in K \iff g^*_{i+1} \in L$ ),

We note the following fact.

Fact 2.3 [Reference Schupp39, Lemma 2.1].

Suppose that $ g^*_0 g^*_1 \cdots g^*_{n-1}$ and $g^{**}_0 g^{**}_1 \cdots g^{**}_{m-1}$ are canonical representations of the same element in $K *_H L$ . Then $g^*_{0}, g^{**}_0 \in K$ , or $g^*_{0}, g^{**}_0 \in L$ , and $(g^*_{0})^{-1} g^{**}_0 \in H$ .

Using the above fact, it is not difficult to verify that the canonical form is unique in the following sense.

Fact 2.4. Suppose that $ g^*_0 g^*_1 \cdots g^*_{n-1}$ and $g^{**}_0 g^{**}_1 \cdots g^{**}_{m-1}$ are canonical representations of the same element in $K *_H L$ . Then $n = m$ , and there exist $h_0, h_1, h_2, \ldots , h_{n} \in H$ with such that

$$\begin{align*}(\forall i <n)[g^{**}_i = h^{-1}_i g^*_i h_{i+1}].\end{align*}$$

Definition 2.5. Fix $g \in K *_H L$ distinct from , and the canonical representation $g = g^*_0 g^*_1 \cdots g^*_{n-1}$ . We say that $g^*_0 g^*_1 \cdots g^*_{n-1}$ is weakly cyclically reduced if

  • $n=1$ , or

  • n is even, or

  • $g^*_{n-1}g^*_0 \notin H$ , equivalently, g has no conjugate that has a canonical representation shorter than $n-1$ .

Recalling Fact 2.4, it is not difficult to see that the property of being weakly cyclically reduced is a property of the group element $g \in K *_H L$ , so it does not depend on the particular choice of the canonical representation $g= g^*_0 g^*_1 \cdots g^*_{n-1}$ .

Observation 2.6.

  1. (1) If $g^*_0 g^*_1 \cdots g^*_{n-1}$ is a canonical representation of an element , $n\geq 2$ , then g has a conjugate $g'$ that has a canonical representation of length $m=1$ , or $m=2k$ for some $k \geq 1$ . Moreover, each conjugate $g"$ of g has length at least m.

  2. (2) If $g^*_0 g^*_1 \cdots g^*_{n-1}$ is a canonical representation of an element , n is even, and $g'$ is a weakly cyclically reduced conjugate of g, then $g'$ has a canonical representation in the following form:

    $$\begin{align*}g' = x^{\prime}_i g^*_{i+1} g^*_{i+2} \cdots g^*_{n-1} g^*_{0} \cdots g^*_{i-1} x^{\prime\prime}_i, \end{align*}$$
    where
    • if $g^*_i \in K$ , then $x^{\prime }_i, x^{\prime \prime }_i \in K$ and $K \models x^{\prime \prime }_ix^{\prime }_i = g^*_i$ ,

    • if $g^*_i \in L$ , then $x^{\prime }_i, x^{\prime \prime }_i \in L$ and $L \models x^{\prime \prime }_ix^{\prime }_i = g^*_i$ .

    In particular, the length of any canonical representation of $g'$ is either n or $n+1$ .

Definition 2.7 [Reference Lyndon and Schupp29, p. 286].

Let $H \leq K,L$ be groups such that $L \cap K = H$ , and fix $R \subseteq K *_H L$ . We say that R is symmetrized if for every $g \in R$ ,

  1. (1) $g^{-1} \in R$ , and

  2. (2) for each $g'$ that is conjugate to g and weakly cyclically reduced, $g' \in R$ .

Definition 2.8 [Reference Lyndon and Schupp29, p. 286].

Let $X \subseteq K *_H L$ , and $\chi \in (0, 1)$ . We say that X satisfies $C'(\chi )$ , if whenever

  1. (1) $g^*_{n-1} g^*_{n-2} \cdots g^*_1 g^*_{0}, g^{**}_0 g^{**}_1 \cdots g^{**}_{m-1} \in X$ ,

  2. (2) ,

  3. (3) $\ell < n,m$ , and

  4. (4) $g^*_{\ell -1}g^*_{\ell -2} \cdots g^*_0g^{**}_0g^{**}_1 \cdots g^{**}_{\ell -1} \in H$ ,

then $\ell < \min (n,m) \cdot \chi $ , and moreover, $\min (n,m)> \frac {1}{\chi }$ .

Definition 2.9 [Reference Lyndon and Schupp29, p. 286].

Let $H,K,L$ be as in Definition 2.1, and let $g \in K *_H L$ . We say that the word $w_0w_1 \cdots w_{m-1}$ is a part of g if

  1. (1) $w_0w_1 \cdots w_{m-1} \in K *_H L$ is in canonical form,

  2. (2) for some weakly cyclically reduced conjugate $g'$ of g, the word $w_0w_1\cdots w_{m-1}$ is a subword of a canonical representation of $g'$ (i.e., for some canonical representation $v_0 v_1 \cdots v_{n-1}$ of $g'$ and some $k \leq n-m$ , we have $v_k = w_0$ , $v_{k+1} = w_1, \ldots , v_{k+m-2} = w_{m-2}$ and $v_{k+m-1} = w_{m-1}$ ).

We cite the following lemma, which is our key technical tool borrowed from small cancellation theory.

Fact 2.10 [Reference Lyndon and Schupp29, Theorem 11.2].

Let $H \leq K,L$ be groups, $K \cap L = H$ , $k\ge 6$ , and assume that $R \subseteq K *_H L$ is symmetrized and satisfies $C'(\frac {1}{k})$ .

Then, letting $N=\operatorname {\mathrm {ncl}}(R,K *_H L)$ be the normal subgroup generated by R, for every weakly cyclically reduced $w \in N$ that is nontrivial (i.e., ), there exist $r \in R$ and a part p of r, which is also a part of w, and $\ell (p)> \frac {k-3}{k} \ell (r)$ .

Corollary 2.11. If $H,K,L,R$ are as in Fact 2.10, then for the canonical projection map $\pi : K \ast _H L \to (K \ast _H L)/N$ , it is the case that $\pi \mathbin \upharpoonright K$ and $\pi \mathbin \upharpoonright L$ are injective, and $ \pi "K \cap \pi "L = \pi "H$ (where $K,L$ are identified with the subgroups of $K \ast _H L$ ).

3 Finding the right amalgam

The main result of this section is Lemma 3.4 below. It originates from the lemma by G. Hesse appearing in the Appendix of [Reference Shelah40]. The lemma will serve as a building block in the recursive construction of Section 5.

Definition 3.1. Let $\varrho (x,y)$ denote the word $xyx^2yx^3y \cdots x^{80}y$ .

Note that $\ell (\varrho (x,y)) = 3320$ .

Definition 3.2. For all $j<\omega $ and $x,y$ , we shall define a word $\varrho _j(x,y)$ over the alphabet $\{x,y\}$ . First, define a sequence $\langle n_j \mathrel {|} j <\omega \rangle $ of integers via $n_j= 3320^j$ . Then, let $\varrho _j(x,y) = \varrho (x^{n_j},y^{n_j})$ , so that $\varrho _0=\varrho $ .

Definition 3.3. Let $G \leq H$ be a pair of groups.

  • Define an equivalence relation $\sim _{G}$ over H via

    $$ \begin{align*}a\sim_{G}b\text{ iff } a \in G b^{\pm 1} G,\end{align*} $$
    where $G b^{\pm 1} G$ denotes the set $GbG \cup Gb^{-1}G$ .
  • We say that G is a malnormal subgroup of H, and denote it by $G \mathrel {\leq _{\mathrm {m}}} H$ , if for all and $h\in H\setminus G$ , it is the case that $h^{-1}gh \notin G$ .

Note that $\mathrel {\leq _{\mathrm {m}}}$ is a transitive relation.

Lemma 3.4. Let $H \leq K$ , $H \mathrel {\leq _{\mathrm {m}}} L$ be groups, $K \cap L = H$ and suppose that we are given a system of quadruples

$$ \begin{align*}S = \{ (h_\sigma,a_\sigma,b_\sigma,b_\sigma')\mathrel{|} \sigma \in \Sigma\} \subseteq H \times (K \setminus H) \times (L\setminus H)\times (L\setminus H)\end{align*} $$

that satisfies the following two:

  1. (1) for every $\sigma \in \Sigma $ , $b_\sigma \not \sim _H b^{\prime }_{\sigma }$ ;

  2. (2) for all $\sigma \neq \sigma ^*$ in $\Sigma $ , at least one of the following holds:

    1. (⊝) a $a_\sigma \not \sim _H a_{\sigma ^*}$ (in K);

    2. (⊝) b $b_\sigma \not \sim _H b_{\sigma ^*}$ ;

    3. (⊝) c $b_\sigma = b_{\sigma ^*}$ and $a_\sigma \neq a_{\sigma ^*}$ ;

    4. (⊝) d there are subgroups $H_\sigma \leq H$ and $K_\sigma \leq K$ such that all of the following hold:

      1. (i) $K_\sigma \cap H = H_\sigma $ ;

      2. (ii) $a_\sigma , a_{\sigma ^*} \in K_\sigma \setminus H = K_\sigma \setminus H_\sigma $ ;

      3. (iii) $b_\sigma \not \sim _{H_\sigma }b_{\sigma ^*}$ (although typically $b_\sigma \sim _{H}b_{\sigma ^*}$ );

      4. (iv) $b_\sigma \not \sim _H b_{\sigma ^*}'$ ;

      5. (v) $(K_\sigma \setminus H) \cdot (H\setminus K_\sigma ) \cdot (K_\sigma \setminus H) \subseteq (K \setminus H)$ .

Then, letting R be the symmetric closure of $\{h_\sigma ^{-1}\varrho (b_\sigma a_\sigma , b_\sigma 'a_\sigma )\mathrel {|} \sigma \in \Sigma \}$ , $M = K \ast _H L$ , $N= \operatorname {\mathrm {ncl}}(R,M)$ be the generated normal subgroup and $M^* = M / N$ , all of the following hold:

  1. (A) R satisfies the condition $C'(\frac {1}{10}$ ), and consequently, the group $M^*$ embeds both K and L with

    $$ \begin{align*}M^* \models K \cap L = H\end{align*} $$
    and $K \cup L$ generates $M^*$ . Moreover, the set $R^{+}$ defined to be the symmetric closure of
    $$ \begin{align*}\{h_\sigma^{-1}\varrho(b_\sigma a_\sigma, b_\sigma'a_\sigma), \ \varrho_j(b_\sigma a_\sigma, b_\sigma'a_\sigma) \mathrel{|} \sigma \in \Sigma, \ j \in \omega \setminus \{0\}\}\end{align*} $$
    also satisfies $C'(\frac {1}{10}$ );
  2. (B) $K \mathrel {\leq _{\mathrm {m}}} M^*$ , and if $H \mathrel {\leq _{\mathrm {m}}} K$ , then $L \mathrel {\leq _{\mathrm {m}}} M^*$ ;

  3. (C) for all $b,b^* \in L \setminus H$ and $z \in K \setminus H$ , if $b\sim _H b^*$ , then $M^*\models b^*z \not \sim _K bzbz$ ;

  4. (D) if $b,b' \in L \setminus H$ , $a \in K \setminus H$ , then $M^* \models bab' \notin K$ , $ba \notin K$ (and similarly, the parallel statement with interchanging K and L);

  5. (E) if $a,a' \in K \setminus H$ , $a \not \sim _{H'} a'$ for subgroups $H' \leq H$ and $L' \leq L$ such that $L' \cap K = L' \cap H = H'$ , then $a \not \sim _{L'} a'$ holds too (in $M^*$ );

  6. (F) similarly, if $b , b' \in L \setminus H$ , $b \not \sim _{H'} b'$ for subgroups $H' \leq H$ and $K' \leq K$ such that $K' \cap L = K' \cap H = H'$ , then $b \not \sim _{K'} b'$ holds (in $M^*$ );

  7. (G) if K and L are torsion-free, then so is $M^*$ .

Proof. First we note that for all $a \in K \setminus H$ , $b,b' \in L \setminus H$ , the word $\varrho (ba, b'a)$ is an alternating word (over the union of $K\setminus H$ and $L \setminus H$ ) of length $6640$ .

  1. (A) By Corollary 2.11 (and $R \subseteq R^+$ ), it is enough to argue that $R^+$ satisfies $C'(\frac {1}{10})$ . To this end, fix two elements $g \neq g^*$ in $R^+$ , as well as some canonical representations

    $$ \begin{align*}\begin{array}{lll} g&=&g_0g_1\cdots g_{n-1},\\ g^*&=&g^*_0g^*_1\cdots g_{m-1}^*. \end{array}\end{align*} $$
    By Clause (2) of Observation 2.6, there are $i,i^* \in \omega $ such that $n \in \{6640 n_i, 6640n_i+1\}$ , $m \in \{6640 n_{i^*}, 6640n_{i^*}+1\}$ .

    Let $l \in \omega $ , and assume that

    (*) $$ \begin{align} \bigwedge_{k\le l}(K \ast_H L \models g^{-1}_{k-1}g^{-1}_{k-2}\cdots g_0^{-1}g^*_0g^*_1\cdots g^*_{k-1} \in H), \end{align} $$
    so we have to show that $l < 664 \cdot \min (n_i,n_{i^*})$ .

    Assume on the contrary that $l \geq 664\cdot n_i$ . We can choose $\sigma \in \Sigma $ , ${\varepsilon } \in \{1,-1\}$ , such that letting $r= h_\sigma ^{-1}\varrho _{n_i}(b_\sigma a_\sigma , b_\sigma 'a_\sigma )$ , g is a weakly cyclically reduced conjugate of $r^{\varepsilon } = (h_\sigma ^{-1}\varrho _{n_i}(b_\sigma a_\sigma , b_\sigma 'a_\sigma ))^{\varepsilon }$ if $n_i = 0$ , or of $r^{\varepsilon } = (\varrho _{n_i}(b_\sigma a_\sigma , b_\sigma 'a_\sigma ))^{{\varepsilon }}$ , and similarly for $g^*$ , $r^*$ and $\sigma ^*$ , ${\varepsilon }^*$ . If we fix the canonical representations

    $$ \begin{align*}r = u_0u_1 \cdots u_{6640 n_i-1},\end{align*} $$
    where $u_j \in \{b_\sigma ,b_\sigma ',a_\sigma ,h_\sigma ^{-1}b_\sigma \}$ , and similarly
    $$ \begin{align*}r^* = u^*_0u^*_1 \cdots u^*_{6640 n_{i^*}-1},\end{align*} $$
    then again recalling Observation 2.6(2), we can assume that there exist $j < 6640 n_i$ , $j^* <6640n_{i^*}$ , such that whenever $0 < k < 6640 n_i-1$ , then $g_k = u^{\varepsilon }_{j+ {\varepsilon } k}$ , and if $0<k < 6640 n_{i^*}-1$ , then $g^*_k = (u^*_{j^* + {\varepsilon }^* k})^{{\varepsilon }^*}$ .

    We first observe that $i = i^*$ , since otherwise if, say, $i<i^*$ did hold, then for some $1 \leq k,k' \leq 81 n_i$ with $u_{j + {\varepsilon } k} =b_\sigma $ , $u_{j + {\varepsilon } k'} =b^{\prime }_\sigma $ , while $u^*_{j + {\varepsilon } k} = u^*_{j + {\varepsilon } k'} \in \{b_{\sigma ^*}, b^{\prime }_{\sigma ^*}\}$ , and so by (*), we get

    $$ \begin{align*}b_\sigma = u_{j + {\varepsilon} k} \sim_H u^*_{j + {\varepsilon} k} = u^*_{j + {\varepsilon} k'} \sim_H u_{j + {\varepsilon} k'} =b_\sigma',\end{align*} $$
    contradicting $b_\sigma \not \sim _H b_\sigma '$ . From now on, n will denote the common value of $n_i = n_{i^*}$ .

    Now note that $b_\sigma \sim _H b_{\sigma ^*}$ : there is a k with $1 \leq k \leq 10 n$ such that $u_{j + {\varepsilon } k} \in \{b_\sigma , h^{-1}_\sigma b_\sigma \}$ , and $u^*_{j^* + {\varepsilon }^* k} \in \{b_{\sigma ^*}, h^{-1}_{\sigma ^*}b_{\sigma ^*}\}$ , so by (*) for some $h \in H$ , we have $b^{-{\varepsilon }}_\sigma h b^{{\varepsilon }^*}_{\sigma ^*} \in H$ , implying that $b_\sigma \sim _H b_{\sigma ^*}$ . Similarly, for some $k^\bullet $ , $1 \leq k^\bullet \leq 2 n$ , $u_{j + {\varepsilon } k^\bullet } = a_\sigma $ , and $u^*_{j^* + {\varepsilon }^* k^\bullet } = a_{\sigma ^*}$ , and by the same line of reasoning, $a_\sigma \sim _H a_{\sigma ^*}$ .

    We clearly get that

    $(\boxminus )$ either $(\circleddash )_c$ , or $(\circleddash )_d$ , or $\sigma = \sigma ^*$ holds, and in each case, $b_\sigma \not \sim _H b_{\sigma ^*}'$ .

    Now, note that if $j \neq j^*$ or ${\varepsilon } \neq {\varepsilon }^*$ , then there exists k with $1 \leq k <500 n$ such that $u_{j + {\varepsilon } k} \in \{b_\sigma , h_\sigma ^{-1}b_\sigma \}$ , and $u^*_{j^* + {\varepsilon }^* k} = b^{\prime }_{\sigma ^*} = b_\sigma '$ , and for some $h \in H$ , we have $b_\sigma ^{-{\varepsilon }} h(b^{\prime }_{\sigma ^*})^{{\varepsilon }^*} \in H$ (or $(h_\sigma ^{-1}b_\sigma )^{-{\varepsilon }} h(b^{\prime }_{\sigma ^*})^{{\varepsilon }^*}$ ), so $b_\sigma \sim _H b_{\sigma ^*}'$ , contradicting $(\boxminus )$ . Therefore, hereafter, we can assume that $j = j^*$ and ${\varepsilon } = {\varepsilon }^*$ .

    We now divide our analysis into a few cases and subcases:

    1. If either $(\circleddash )_c$ or $\sigma = \sigma ^*$ , then necessarily, $b_\sigma = b_{\sigma ^*}$ and $b_\sigma ' = b_{\sigma ^*}'$ . But now for some k with $1\leq k \leq 10n$ , $g_k = g^*_k = b_\sigma ^\varepsilon $ , so for

      $$ \begin{align*}h = g^{-1}_{k-1}g^{-1}_{k-2} \cdots g^{-1}_0g^*_0g^*_1 \cdots g^*_{k-1} \in H,\end{align*} $$
      we have
      $$ \begin{align*}g^{-1}_k h g^*_k \in H,\end{align*} $$
      but then $H \mathrel {\leq _{\mathrm {m}}} L$ together with $b_\sigma \in L \setminus H$ imply that .
      1. ▸▸ If $\sigma = \sigma ^*$ , then invoking Observation 2.6(2) again (and recalling that g and $g^*$ are cyclically reduced conjugates of $h^{-1}_\sigma \varrho (b_\sigma a_\sigma , b_\sigma 'a_\sigma )$ ), it is straightforward to check that $j = j^*$ and ${\varepsilon } = {\varepsilon }^*$ imply $g = g^*$ , which is a contradiction.

      2. ▸▸ If $\sigma \neq \sigma ^*$ and $a_\sigma \neq a_{\sigma ^*}$ , then implies that

        and in the following step (conjugating by $b_\sigma =b_{\sigma ^*}$ again), we get a contradiction.
    2. If the pair $\sigma $ , $\sigma ^*$ satisfies condition $(\circleddash )_d$ , then we argue as follows. First, we claim that the there exists a k with $1 \leq k < 10n+2$ such that following three hold:

      1. (⊠)1 $g_k = u_{j + {\varepsilon } k}^{\varepsilon } = a^{\varepsilon }_\sigma $ ,

      2. (⊠)2 $g^*_k = (u^*_{j + {\varepsilon } k})^{\varepsilon } = a^{{\varepsilon }}_{\sigma ^*}$ ,

      3. (⊠)3 $h = g^{-1}_{k-1}g^{-1}_{k-2} \cdots g^{-1}_0g^*_0g^*_1 \cdots g^*_{k-1} \in H \setminus K' = H \setminus H'$ .

      As before, for some $k^\bullet < 10n$ , we have $u^{\varepsilon }_{j + {\varepsilon } k^\bullet } = a^{\varepsilon }_\sigma $ , and $(u^*_{j + {\varepsilon } k^\bullet })^{\varepsilon } = a^{{\varepsilon }}_{\sigma ^*}$ , $u_{j + {\varepsilon } (k^\bullet +1)}^{\varepsilon } = b^{\varepsilon }_\sigma $ , and $u^*_{j + {\varepsilon } (k^\bullet +1)} = b^{{\varepsilon }}_{\sigma ^*}$ . Suppose that

      $$ \begin{align*}h = g^{-1}_{k^\bullet-1}g^{-1}_{k^\bullet-2} \cdots g^{-1}_0g^*_0g^*_1 \cdots g^*_{k^\bullet-1} \in H'.\end{align*} $$
      Then $h' = a^{-{\varepsilon }}_\sigma h a^{\varepsilon }_{\sigma ^*} \in K' H' K' = K'$ , and by our indirect assumptions $a^{-{\varepsilon }}_\sigma h a^{\varepsilon }_\sigma \in H$ , so $h'$ lies in the intersection $K' \cap H = H'$ . Now
      $$ \begin{align*}u_{j + {\varepsilon} (k^\bullet+1)}^{-{\varepsilon}} h' u^{{\varepsilon}}_{j + {\varepsilon} (k^\bullet+1)} = b^{-{\varepsilon}}_\sigma h' b^{\varepsilon}_{\sigma^*} \in b^{-{\varepsilon}}_\sigma H' b^{{\varepsilon}}_{\sigma^*},\end{align*} $$
      so by $(\circleddash )_d$ (iii), this product is not in $H'$ ; thus, we can assume that some $k<10n +2$ satisfies $(\boxtimes )_1$ $(\boxtimes )_2$ .But then using $a_\sigma , a_{\sigma ^*} \in K' \setminus H'$ ,
      $$ \begin{align*} g^{-1}_{k}g^{-1}_{k} \cdots g^{-1}_0g^*_0g^*_1 \cdots g^*_{k}&= a_\sigma^{-{\varepsilon}}h a_{\sigma^*}^{{\varepsilon}}\\&\in (K' \setminus H) \cdot (H \setminus H') \cdot (K' \setminus H) \subseteq K \setminus H. \end{align*} $$
      This is a contradiction.
  2. (B) Fix , and $z \in M^* \setminus K$ , with a canonical form $z = z_0z_1 \cdots z_{m-1}$ satisfying it does not contain any subsequence $z_{\sigma _0}z_{\sigma _0+1}\cdots z_{\sigma _0+j-1}$ that is a subsequence of a canonical form of an element $r \in R$ , where $j> \frac {6640}{2}+1$ (we can assume this, since otherwise, we could insert the entire sequence of the inverse of this fixed canonical form of r). Now suppose that holds in $M^*$ ; that is,

    $$\begin{align*}M \models zgz^{-1}g' \in N. \end{align*}$$
    W.l.o.g. $z_0,z_{m-1} \in L$ (thus m is odd), since otherwise, we can replace g with , and $g'$ with . Now as $g,g' \in K$ , if $g,g'$ are not in H, then the product $z_0z_1 \cdots z_{m-1}gz_{m-1}^{-1} \cdots z_0^{-1}g'$ is in a weakly cyclically reduced form; otherwise, if $g \in H$ , then $z_{m-1}gz_{m-1}^{-1} \in L \setminus H$ (here, we use $H \mathrel {\leq _{\mathrm {m}}} L$ and that $z_{m-1} \in L \setminus H$ ), and similarly, $g' \in H$ implies $z_0^{-1}g'z_0 \in L \setminus H$ . So by these reductions, we obtain a product in a cyclically reduced form of length $2m+2$ or $2m$ , or $2m-2$ . A cyclic conjugate of this word contains a long ( $> 7/10$ ) subword of some canonical form of an $r \in R$ . By our assumptions on z (not containing more than half of a canonical representation of r), this has to involve either g or $g'$ ; in fact, either the word $z_{j}z_{j+1} \cdots z_{m-1}gz^{-1}_{m-1} z^{-1}_{m-2} \cdots z^{-1}_{j}$ (or $z_{j}z_{j+1} \cdots z_{m-2} (z_{m-1}gz^{-1}_{m-1}) z^{-1}_{m-2} \cdots z^{-1}_{j}$ if $g \in H$ ), or $z^{-1}_{j_*}z^{-1}_{j_*-1} \cdots z^{-1}_{0}g'z_{0} z_{1} \cdots z_{j_*}$ contains a long ( $>2/10$ fraction) subword of a canonical form of some $r \in R$ (in the latter case, if $g' \in H$ , then of course we mean the word $z^{-1}_{j_*}z^{-1}_{j_*-1} \cdots (z^{-1}_{0}g'z_{0}) z_{1} \cdots z_{j_*}$ ). But this is impossible since in any $r = r_0r_1 \cdots r_{n-1} \in R$ ( $n \in \{6640,6641\}$ ) at any fixed $t \in [\frac {6640}{10}, \frac {6640 \cdot 9}{10}]$ , there exists $k < 250$ such that (for some $\sigma \in \Sigma $ ) $r_{t-k} \in Hb_\sigma ^{\pm 1}H$ , $r_{t+k} \in H(b_\sigma ')^{\pm 1}H$ , and so $r_{t-k} \not \sim _H r_{t+k}$ , while $z_k$ , $z_k^{-1}$ are clearly $\sim _H$ -related.
  3. (C) Suppose otherwise, for example, for some $k,k' \in K$ either

    or
    Observe that after performing the cancellations in the free amalgam M and writing $y = y_0y_1\cdots y_{m-1}$ as a reduced (alternating) word, in both cases (regardless of whether $k,k' \in H$ ), there is at most one j for which $y_j \in L \setminus H$ and $y_j \not \sim _H b$ . Now possibly replacing $y_0y_1 \cdots y_{m-1}$ with a weakly cyclically reduced conjugate of it (if the reduced form of $y_0y_1 \cdots y_{m-1}$ is not weakly cyclically reduced), this clause remains true (and the resulting word similarly belongs to N in M). It is not difficult to see that there exists at least one $j'$ such that $y_{j'} \sim _H b$ . Again, $y_0y_1 \cdots y_{m-1}$ (or a cyclical permutation of it) contains a long subword of a canonical form of some $r \in R$ , but any such subword (if longer than $400$ ) contains at least two-two occurrences of $b_\sigma $ and $b_\sigma '$ (for some $\sigma \in \Sigma $ ), and b cannot be $\sim _H$ -equivalent with both $b_\sigma $ and $b_\sigma '$ (since $b_\sigma \not \sim _H b_\sigma '$ ).
  4. (D) This is the same as above. Assuming that $M^* \models bab' \in K$ , then for some $a' \in K$ , , so

    $$ \begin{align*}M \models bab'a' \in N.\end{align*} $$
    Now if $a' \in K \setminus H$ , then the word $bab'a'$ is weakly cyclically reduced, so any weakly cyclically reduced conjugate to it is of length either $4$ or $5$ and clearly cannot contain a long subword of any $r \in R$ .

    If $a' \in H$ , then depending on whether $b" = b'a'b \in H$ , we have that either $b^{-1}(bab'a')b = ah \in K \setminus H$ is weakly cyclically reduced (so $M \models bab'a' = b(ah)b^{-1} \notin bNb^{-1} = N$ ) or $b^{-1}bab'a'b = ab'a'b = a b"$ (where $b" \notin H$ ), which is weakly cyclically reduced, and similarly cannot lie in N.

  5. (E) Let $a,a' \in K \setminus H$ be such that $a \not \sim _{H'} a'$ , and fix $l,l' \in L'$ . Suppose that ; that is,

    $$ \begin{align*}M \models w= ala'l' \in N.\end{align*} $$
    We can write w as a reduced word. If $l \in H$ , then $l \in H'$ , and since $a \not \sim _{H'} a'$ , we have $ala' \in K \setminus H'$ , so either $w= (ala')l'$ is a product of an element of $K \setminus H'$ and $L \setminus H$ (if $l' \notin H$ ) which has to lie in $K(L\setminus H)$ (which is disjoint to N) or $(ala')l' \in (K \setminus H') \cdot H' = K \setminus H'$ , and we are done.

    So w.l.o.g. $l \notin H$ . (Similarly, implies that w.l.o.g. $l' \notin H$ ). So any weakly cyclically reduced conjugate of $w \in M$ has length at most $5$ and contains at least $2$ entries from $K \setminus H$ . But $w \in N$ implies that some weakly cyclically reduced conjugate contains a long subword of some $r \in R$ , which is clearly impossible.

  6. (F) The proof of (E) works here too.

  7. (G) Let $g \in M^*$ , $n \in \omega $ , $n>1$ be such that , . Recalling Observation 2.6, we can write g as an alternating product of elements of $K\setminus H$ and $L \setminus H$

    $$ \begin{align*}g = g_0g_1 \cdots g_{2m-1}.\end{align*} $$
    W.l.o.g. there exists no conjugate $ygy^{-1}$ of g, and $g'$ with $g'(ygy^{-1})^{-1} \in N$ such that $g'$ has a shorter canonical representation than $2m$ , since we can replace g with $g'$ and get a torsion element. Therefore, there is no $r \in R$ , $\sigma _0 <2m$ with the sequence $g_{\sigma _0}g_{\sigma _0+1} \cdots g_{2m-1}g_0g_1 \cdots g_{\sigma _0-1}$ containing a subsequence of a canonical representation of r of length $j> \frac {6640}{2}+1$ .Now, since
    $$ \begin{align*}M \models(g_0g_1 \cdots g_{2m-1})^n \in N,\end{align*} $$
    there exists a cyclic conjugate of $(g_0g_1 \cdots g_{2m-1})^n$ and a subsequence $s_0s_1 \cdots s_j$ of it that is also a subsequence of a canonical form of some $s \in R$ with $j \geq \frac {7}{10} \cdot 6640$ . Our assumptions above on $g_0g_1 \cdots g_{2m-1}$ easily imply
    $$ \begin{align*}2m \leq \frac{6640}{2}+1;\end{align*} $$
    thus,
    $$ \begin{align*}2m + \frac{2}{10}\cdot 6640-1 \leq j,\end{align*} $$
    and clearly, $2m+330 \leq j$ . This way we get that $s_\ell \sim _H s_{\ell +2m}$ for each $\ell \leq 330$ , but as s is a cyclically reduced conjugate of $h_\sigma ^{-1}\varrho (b_\sigma a_\sigma ,b_\sigma 'a_\sigma )$ or of its inverse (for some $\sigma \in \Sigma $ ), we get that for some $\ell \in [1, 330] s_{\ell } \in H(b_\sigma )^{\pm 1}H$ , $s_{\ell +2m} \in H(b^{\prime }_\sigma )^{\pm 1}H$ ; thus, $s_\ell \not \sim _H s_{\ell +2m}$ . This is a contradiction.

4 A set-theoretic interlude

In this section, $\chi ,\theta ,\mu ,\lambda $ and $\kappa $ all denote nonzero cardinals. Recall that $[\kappa ]^2$ stands for the collection of all unordered pairs $\{\alpha ,\beta \}$ of ordinals in $\kappa $ , but here we identify it with the collection of all ordered pairs $(\alpha ,\beta )$ with $\alpha <\beta $ .

Definition 4.1. A map $d:[\kappa ]^2\rightarrow \theta $ is subadditive if the following inequalities hold for all $\alpha < \beta < \gamma < \kappa $ :

  1. (1) $d(\alpha , \gamma ) \leq \max \{d(\alpha , \beta ), d(\beta , \gamma )\}$ ;

  2. (2) $d(\alpha , \beta ) \leq \max \{d(\alpha , \gamma ), d(\beta , \gamma )\}$ .

Notation 4.2. Whenever the map $d:[\kappa ]^2\rightarrow \theta $ is clear from the context, we define for all $\gamma < \kappa $ and $i \leq \theta $ , the following sets:

  • $D^\gamma _{<i}=\{\beta < \gamma \mathrel {|} d(\beta , \gamma ) < i\}$ , and

  • $D^\gamma _{\le i}=\{\beta < \gamma \mathrel {|} d(\beta , \gamma ) \le i\}$ .

Lemma 4.3. If $d:[\kappa ]^2\rightarrow \theta $ is subadditive, then for all $\gamma <\kappa $ , $i\le \theta $ , and $\beta \in D^\gamma _{<i}$ , it is the case that $D^\gamma _{<i}\cap \beta =D^{\beta }_{< i}$ .

Proof. Suppose that $d:[\kappa ]^2\rightarrow \theta $ is subadditive, and let $\gamma ,i$ and $\beta $ be as above.

$\blacktriangleright $ By Definition 4.1(1), for every $\alpha \in D^\beta _{<i}$ , $d(\alpha ,\gamma )\le \max \{ d(\alpha ,\beta ),d(\beta ,\gamma )\}$ , so, since $\alpha \in D^\beta _{<i}$ and $\beta \in D^\gamma _{<i}$ , we infer that $d(\alpha ,\gamma )<i$ and $\alpha \in D^\gamma _{<i}\cap \beta $ .

$\blacktriangleright $ By Definition 4.1(2), for every $\alpha \in D^\gamma _{<i}\cap \beta $ , $d(\alpha ,\beta )\le \max \{ d(\alpha ,\gamma ),d(\beta ,\gamma )\}$ , so, since $\alpha ,\beta \in D^\gamma _{<i}$ , we infer that $d(\alpha ,\beta )<i$ and $\alpha \in D^\beta _{<i}$ .

Theorem 4.4. Suppose that $\lambda $ is an infinite regular cardinal. Then there exist two maps $c:[\lambda ^+]^2\rightarrow \lambda ^+$ and $d:[\lambda ^+]^2\rightarrow \lambda $ such that

  • d is subadditive;

  • for every $A\in [\lambda ^+]^{\lambda ^+}$ , there exists a club $D\subseteq \lambda ^+$ such that for every $\delta \in D$ , for every $\beta \in \lambda ^+\setminus \delta $ , for every $\xi <\delta $ , for every $i<\lambda $ , there are cofinally many $\alpha <\delta $ such that $\alpha \in A$ , $c(\alpha ,\beta )=\xi $ and $d(\alpha ,\beta )>i$ .

Proof. Let d be the function $\rho :[\lambda ^+]^2\rightarrow \lambda $ defined in [Reference Todorcevic45, §9.1]. By [Reference Todorcevic45, Lemma 9.1.1], d is subadditive. By [Reference Todorcevic45, Lemma 9.1.2], d is also locally small (i.e., $|D^\gamma _{\le i}|<\lambda $ for all $\gamma <\lambda ^+$ and $i<\lambda $ ).

Next, by [Reference Rinot and Todorcevic37], we may fix a coloring $c:[\lambda ^+]^2\rightarrow \lambda ^+$ witnessing $\lambda ^+\nrightarrow [\lambda ^+;\lambda ^+]^2_{\lambda ^+}$ . By [Reference Inamdar and Rinot22, Lemma 3.16], this means that for every $A\in [\lambda ^+]^{\lambda ^+}$ , there exists an $\epsilon <\lambda ^+$ such that, for all $\beta \in \lambda ^+\setminus \epsilon $ and $\xi <\epsilon $ , there exists $\alpha \in A\cap \epsilon $ such that $c(\alpha ,\beta )=\xi $ .

We now verify that c and d are as sought.

Claim 4.4.1. Let $A\in [\lambda ^+]^{\lambda ^+}$ . Then there exists a club $D\subseteq \lambda ^+$ such that for every $\delta \in D$ , for every $\beta \in \lambda ^+\setminus \delta $ , for every $\xi <\delta $ , for every $i<\lambda $ , there are cofinally many $\alpha <\delta $ such that $\alpha \in A$ , $c(\alpha ,\beta )=\xi $ and $d(\alpha ,\beta )>i$ .

Proof. Let $\langle M_\gamma \mathrel {|} \gamma <\lambda ^+\rangle $ be a sequence of elementary submodels of $\mathcal H_{\lambda ^{++}}$ , each of size $\lambda $ , such that $\{A,e\}\in M_0$ , such that $M_\gamma \in M_{\gamma +1}$ for every $\gamma <\lambda ^+$ , and such that $M_\delta =\bigcup _{\gamma <\delta }M_\gamma $ for every limit nonzero $\delta <\lambda ^+$ . It follows that $C=\{\gamma <\lambda ^+\mathrel {|} M_\gamma \cap \lambda ^+=\gamma \}$ is a club in $\lambda ^+$ .

We claim that the following club is as sought:

$$ \begin{align*}D=\{\delta<\lambda^+\mathrel{|} \operatorname{\mathrm{otp}}(C\cap\delta)=\lambda^\delta\}.\end{align*} $$

To this end, let $\delta \in D$ , $\beta \in \lambda ^+\setminus \delta $ , $\xi <\delta $ , $i<\lambda $ , and $\eta <\delta $ . We shall find an $\alpha \in A\cap \delta $ above $\eta $ such that $c(\alpha ,\beta )=\xi $ and $d(\alpha ,\beta )>i$ .

For every $\gamma \in C\setminus \xi $ , the set $A_\gamma =A\setminus \gamma $ is in $[\lambda ^+]^{\lambda ^+}\cap M_{\gamma +1}$ , and hence, there exists $\epsilon \in \lambda ^+\cap M_{\gamma +1}$ such that for all $\beta '\in \lambda ^+\setminus \epsilon $ and $\xi '<\epsilon $ , there exists $\alpha '\in A_\gamma \cap \epsilon $ such that $c(\alpha ',\beta ')=\xi '$ . In particular, we may pick $\alpha _\gamma \in A\cap M_{\gamma +1}\setminus \gamma $ such that $c(\alpha _\gamma ,\beta )=\xi $ . It follows that $\gamma \mapsto \alpha _\gamma $ is a strictly increasing function from $C\cap \delta $ to $A\cap \delta $ . As $\delta \in D$ , we infer that $A'=\{ \alpha \in A\cap \delta \mathrel {|} \eta <\alpha \ \&\ c(\alpha ,\beta )=\xi \}$ has size $\lambda $ . As d is locally small, we may now pick $\alpha \in A'\setminus D^\beta _{\le i}$ . Then $\alpha \in A\cap \delta $ above $\eta $ , $d(\alpha ,\beta )>i$ and $c(\alpha ,\beta )=\xi $ , as sought.

This completes the proof.

Remark 4.5. The preceding result does not generalize to the case when $\lambda $ is a singular cardinal. Indeed, it follows from [Reference Lambie-Hanson and Rinot28, Lemma 3.38] that if $\lambda $ is the singular limit of strongly compact cardinals, then for every infinite cardinal $\theta \le \lambda $ , for every subadditive map $d:[\lambda ^+]^2\rightarrow \theta $ , there must exist an $A\in [\lambda ^+]^{\lambda ^+}$ such that $\sup \{ d(\alpha ,\beta )\mathrel {|} \alpha <\beta \text { in }A\}<\theta $ .

Definition 4.6 [Reference Shelah41].

$\operatorname {\mathrm {Pr}}_1(\kappa , \kappa , \theta , \chi )$ asserts the existence of a coloring $c:[\kappa ]^2 \rightarrow \theta $ such that for every $\sigma <\chi $ , every pairwise disjoint subfamily $\mathcal {A} \subseteq [\kappa ]^{\sigma }$ of size $\kappa $ , and every $\tau < \theta $ , there are $a,b\in \mathcal A$ with $\sup (a)<\min (b)$ such that $c[a \times b] = \{\tau \}$ .

Definition 4.7 [Reference Lambie-Hanson and Rinot26].

$\operatorname {\mathrm {U}}(\kappa , \mu , \theta , \chi )$ asserts the existence of a coloring $d:[\kappa ]^2\rightarrow \theta $ such that for every $\sigma < \chi $ , every pairwise disjoint subfamily $\mathcal {A} \subseteq [\kappa ]^{\sigma }$ of size $\kappa $ , and every $\tau < \theta $ , there exists $\mathcal {B} \in [\mathcal {A}]^\mu $ such that, for all $a, b \in \mathcal {B}$ with $\sup (a)<\min (b)$ , it is the case that $\min (d[a\times b])\ge \tau $ .

Theorem 4.8. Suppose that

  • $\theta <\kappa $ are infinite regular cardinals;

  • $c:[\kappa ]^2\rightarrow \kappa $ is a coloring witnessing $\operatorname {\mathrm {Pr}}_1(\kappa ,\kappa ,\kappa ,4)$ ;

  • $d:[\kappa ]^2\rightarrow \theta $ is a subadditive coloring witnessing $\operatorname {\mathrm {U}}(\kappa ,2,\theta ,2)$ .

Then, for every $A\in [\kappa ]^\kappa $ , there exists a club $D\subseteq \kappa $ such that for every $\delta \in D$ , for every $\beta \in \kappa \setminus \delta $ , for every $\xi <\delta $ , for every $i<\theta $ , there are cofinally many $\alpha <\delta $ such that $\alpha \in A$ , $c(\alpha ,\beta )=\xi $ and $d(\alpha ,\beta )>i$ .

Proof. We start by verifying a special case.

Claim 4.8.1. Let $A\in [\kappa ]^\kappa $ , $\xi <\kappa $ and $i<\theta $ . There exists $\gamma <\kappa $ such that for every $\beta \in \kappa \setminus \gamma $ , there exists $\alpha \in A\cap \gamma $ such that $c(\alpha ,\beta )=\xi $ and $d(\alpha ,\beta )>i$ .

Proof. For every $\epsilon <\kappa $ , $A\setminus \epsilon $ is in $[\kappa ]^\kappa $ , and as $d:[\kappa ]^2\rightarrow \theta $ witnesses $\operatorname {\mathrm {U}}(\kappa ,2,\theta ,2)$ , it is the case that $d"[A\setminus \epsilon ]^2$ is cofinal in $\theta $ . It thus follows that we may fix a $\kappa $ -sized pairwise disjoint subfamily $\mathcal A$ of $[A]^2$ such that $d(a)>i$ for all $a\in \mathcal A$ . Note that for all $\beta <\kappa $ and $a\in \mathcal A\cap \mathcal P(\beta )$ , there must exist some $\alpha \in a$ such that $d(\alpha ,\beta )>i$ because, by subadditivity,

$$ \begin{align*}i<d(a)\le\max\{d(\min(a),\beta),d(\max(a),\beta)\}.\end{align*} $$

Therefore, it now suffices to prove that there exists some $\gamma <\kappa $ such that for every $\beta \in \kappa \setminus \gamma $ , there exists $a\in \mathcal A\cap \mathcal P(\gamma )$ such that $c[a\times \{\beta \}]=\{\xi \}$ . Towards a contradiction, suppose that this is not the case. For every $\gamma <\kappa $ , fix $\beta _\gamma \in \kappa \setminus \gamma $ such that there exists no $a\in \mathcal A\cap \mathcal P(\gamma )$ with $c[a\times \{\beta _\gamma \}]=\{\xi \}$ . For each $\gamma <\kappa $ , set $a_\gamma =\{\beta _\gamma \}\cup a$ for some $a\in \mathcal A$ such that $\min (a)>\beta _\gamma $ . Fix a club $C\subseteq \kappa $ such that for every $\gamma \in C$ , for every $\bar \gamma <\gamma $ , $\max (a_{\bar \gamma })<\gamma $ . It follows that $\mathcal A'=\{ a_\gamma \mathrel {|} \gamma \in C\}$ is a collection of $\kappa $ -many pairwise disjoint elements of $[\kappa ]^3$ . So, since c witnesses $\operatorname {\mathrm {Pr}}_1(\kappa ,\kappa ,\kappa ,4)$ , we may find $a,b\in \mathcal A'$ with $\max (a)<\min (b)$ such that $c[a\times b]=\{\xi \}$ . Pick $\bar \gamma ,\gamma $ in C such that $a=a_{\bar \gamma }$ and $b=a_\gamma $ . From $\max (a_{\bar \gamma })<\min (a_\gamma )$ , it follows that $\bar \gamma <\gamma $ , and

$$ \begin{align*}\max(a_{\bar\gamma})<\gamma\le\beta_\gamma=\min(a_\gamma).\end{align*} $$

In particular, $a'=a_{\bar \gamma }\setminus \{\beta _\gamma \}$ is an element of $\mathcal A\cap \mathcal P(\gamma )$ and $c[a'\times \{\beta _\gamma \}]=\{\xi \}$ . This is a contradiction.

Now, given $A\in [\kappa ]^\kappa $ , let $\langle M_\gamma \mathrel {|} \gamma <\kappa \rangle $ be a sequence of elementary submodels of $\mathcal H_{\kappa ^+}$ , each of size less than $\kappa $ , such that $\{A,c,d\}\cup \theta \subseteq M_0$ , such that $M_\gamma \in M_{\gamma +1}$ for every $\gamma <\kappa $ , and such that $M_\delta =\bigcup _{\gamma <\delta }M_\gamma $ for every limit nonzero $\delta <\kappa $ . We claim that the following club is as sought:

$$ \begin{align*}D=\{\delta<\kappa\mathrel{|} M_\delta\cap\kappa=\delta\}.\end{align*} $$

To see it, let $\beta \in \kappa \setminus \delta $ , $\xi <\delta $ , $i<\theta $ , and $\epsilon <\delta $ ; we must find $\alpha \in A$ with $\epsilon \le \alpha <\delta $ such that $c(\alpha ,\beta )=\xi $ and $d(\alpha ,\beta )>i$ . The set $A'=A\setminus \epsilon $ is in $[\kappa ]^\kappa \cap M_\delta $ , and so are $\xi $ and i. It thus follows from Claim 4.8.1 that there exists $\gamma \in \kappa \cap M_\delta $ such that for every $\beta '\in \kappa \setminus \gamma $ , there exists $\alpha \in A'\cap \gamma $ such that $c(\alpha ,\beta ')=\xi $ and $d(\alpha ,\beta ')>i$ . As $\gamma <\delta \le \beta $ , it follows that there exists $\alpha \in A'\cap \gamma $ such that $c(\alpha ,\beta )=\xi $ and $d(\alpha ,\beta )>i$ . Evidently, $\epsilon \le \alpha <\delta $ .

In reading the next definition, recall that for a set X of ordinals, $\operatorname {\mathrm {acc}}(X)$ stands for the set of all nonzero $\xi \in X$ such that $\sup (X\cap \xi )=\xi $ .

Definition 4.9 [Reference Brodsky and Rinot5].

For infinite regular cardinals $\theta <\kappa $ , the principle $\square (\kappa ,{\sqsubseteq _\theta })$ asserts the existence of a sequence $\vec C=\langle C_\alpha \mathrel {|} \alpha <\kappa \rangle $ satisfying the following:

  • for every $\alpha <\kappa $ , $C_\alpha $ is a closed subset of $\alpha $ with $\sup (C_\alpha )=\sup (\alpha )$ ;

  • for all $\alpha <\kappa $ and $\bar \alpha \in \operatorname {\mathrm {acc}}(C_\alpha )$ , if $\operatorname {\mathrm {otp}}(C_\alpha )\ge \theta $ , then $C_{\bar \alpha }=C_\alpha \cap \bar \alpha $ ;

  • for every club D in $\kappa $ , there exists some $\alpha \in \operatorname {\mathrm {acc}}(D)$ such that $D\cap \alpha \neq C_\alpha $ .

Note that $\square (\kappa ,{\sqsubseteq _{\vartheta }})$ implies $\square (\kappa ,{\sqsubseteq _\theta })$ whenever $\vartheta <\theta $ . The strongest instance $\square (\kappa ,{\sqsubseteq _\omega })$ is commonly denoted by $\square (\kappa )$ .

Corollary 4.10. Suppose that $\theta <\kappa $ are infinite regular cardinals.

If either $\square (\kappa ,{\sqsubseteq _\theta })$ holds or if there exists a uniformly coherent $\kappa $ -Souslin tree, then there exist two maps $c:[\kappa ]^2\rightarrow \kappa $ and $d:[\kappa ]^2\rightarrow \theta $ such that

  • d is subadditive;

  • for every $A\in [\kappa ]^\kappa $ , there exists a club $D\subseteq \kappa $ such that for every $\delta \in D$ , for every $\beta \in \kappa \setminus \delta $ , for every $\xi <\delta $ , for every $i<\theta $ , there are cofinally many $\alpha <\delta $ such that $\alpha \in A$ , $c(\alpha ,\beta )=\xi $ and $d(\alpha ,\beta )>i$ .

Proof. By Theorem 4.4, we may assume that $\theta ^+<\kappa $ . Also, by Theorem 4.8, it suffices to find a map $c:[\kappa ]^2\rightarrow \kappa $ witnessing $\operatorname {\mathrm {Pr}}_1(\kappa ,\kappa ,\kappa ,4)$ , and a subadditive map $d:[\kappa ]^2\rightarrow \theta $ witnessing $\operatorname {\mathrm {U}}(\kappa ,2,\theta ,2)$ .

By [Reference Rinot36, Theorem B], $\square (\kappa )$ implies $\operatorname {\mathrm {Pr}}_1(\kappa ,\kappa ,\kappa ,\theta )$ . Inspecting the proof of [Reference Rinot36, Theorem 3.3] makes it clear that the same conclusion already follows from $\square (\kappa ,{\sqsubseteq _\theta })$ . In addition, by [Reference Lambie-Hanson and Rinot28, Theorem A], $\square (\kappa ,{\sqsubseteq _\theta })$ yields a subadditive witness to $\operatorname {\mathrm {U}}(\kappa ,2,\theta ,2)$ .

Next, by [Reference Lambie-Hanson and Rinot28, Corollary 3.29], the existence of a uniformly coherent $\kappa $ -Souslin tree yields a subadditive witness to $\operatorname {\mathrm {U}}(\kappa ,2,\theta ,2)$ . It is also well known that the existence of a uniformly coherent $\kappa $ -Souslin tree induces a witness to $\operatorname {\mathrm {Pr}}_1(\kappa ,\kappa ,\kappa ,\omega )$ .

Remark 4.11. Coming back to the limitation highlighted in Remark 4.5, we point out that the conclusion of Corollary 4.10 is nevertheless compatible with a bounded amount of large cardinals. The point is that $\square (\kappa ,{\sqsubseteq _\theta })$ may be added by means of a $\theta $ -directed-closed and $\kappa $ -strategically-closed forcing, so by Laver’s indestructibility theorem, $\square (\kappa ,{\sqsubseteq _\theta })$ is compatible with $\theta $ being supercompact. In parallel, the existence of a uniformly coherent $\kappa $ -Souslin tree is compatible with $\kappa $ possessing a generically-large cardinal property that refutes $\square (\kappa ,{\sqsubseteq _\theta })$ for all $\theta <\kappa $ (see [Reference Lambie-Hanson and Rinot27, Theorem 3.3]).

5 A construction of a Shelah group

This section is devoted to proving the core result of this paper. The assumptions of the upcoming theorem are motivated by the results of the previous section.

Theorem 5.1. Suppose

  • $\theta <\kappa $ is a pair of infinite regular cardinals;

  • $c:[\kappa ]^2\rightarrow \kappa $ is a coloring;

  • $d:[\kappa ]^2\rightarrow \theta $ is a subadditive coloring;

  • for every $A\in [\kappa ]^\kappa $ , there exists a club $B\subseteq \kappa $ such that for every $\beta \in B$ , there exists $\gamma \in A$ above $\beta $ such that for all $\xi <\beta $ and $i<\theta $ , there are cofinally many $\alpha <\beta $ such that $\alpha \in A$ , $c(\alpha ,\gamma )=\xi $ and $d(\alpha ,\gamma )>i$ .

Then there exists a torsion-free Shelah group G of size $\kappa $ .

Before embarking on the proof, we make a few promises and unfold some of their consequences.

5.1 Promises and their consequences

We start by listing our promises:

  1. (p)1 We shall recursively construct distinguished group elements $\langle x_\alpha \mathrel {|} \alpha <\kappa \rangle $ generating the whole group G. For every subset $A\subseteq \kappa $ , $G_A$ will denote the group generated by $\{ x_\alpha \mathrel {|} \alpha \in A\}$ , so that and $G_\kappa =G$ ;

  2. (p)2 For every $\gamma \le \kappa $ , the underlying set of $G_\gamma $ will be an initial segment of $\kappa $ ;

  3. (p)3 For all $\gamma < \kappa $ and $i < \theta $ , $G_{D^\gamma _{< i} \cup \{\gamma \}}$ is torsion-free;Footnote 4

  4. (p)4 For all $\gamma <\kappa $ and $i<\theta $ , $G_{D^\gamma _{< i} \cup \{\gamma \}} \cap G_{D^\gamma _{\leq i}} = G_{D^\gamma _{< i}}$ ;

  5. (p)5 For all $\gamma < \kappa $ and $i < \theta $ , $ G_{D^\gamma _{< i}} \mathrel {\leq _{\mathrm {m}}} G_{D^\gamma _{< i} \cup \{\gamma \}}$ ;

  6. (p)6 For all $\gamma \in [1,\kappa )$ and $i\in [1,\theta )$ , $G_{D^\gamma _{\le i}\cup \{\gamma \}}$ is the group $M^*$ given by Lemma 3.4 when invoked with the groups

    • $H = G_{D^\gamma _{< i}}$ ,

    • $ K = G_{D^\gamma _{\le i}}$ ,

    • $L = G_{D^\gamma _{< i} \cup \{\gamma \}}$ ,

    and an appropriate (possibly empty) system S.

At the outset, we also agree on the following pieces of notation.

Notation 5.2. For every subset $A\subseteq \kappa $ , we shall denote by $\equiv _A$ the relation $\sim _{G_A}$ of Definition 3.3. That is, $g\equiv _Ah$ iff there are $y_0,y_1\in G_A$ and $\varepsilon \in \{1,-1\}$ such that $g=y_0\cdot h^\varepsilon \cdot y_1$ .

Notation 5.3. For all $\gamma <\kappa $ and $g\in G_\gamma $ , let

$$ \begin{align*}i^\gamma_g = \min \{i < \theta\mathrel{|} g \in G_{D^{\gamma}_{\le i}}\}.\end{align*} $$

We shall also record the first appearance of an element by letting

$$ \begin{align*}\alpha_g = \min \{\alpha<\kappa\mathrel{|} g \in G_{\alpha+1}\}.\end{align*} $$

Since $g\in G_{\alpha _g\cup \{\alpha _g\}}$ and $\alpha _g=\bigcup _{i<\theta }D^{\alpha _g}_{\le i}$ , it also makes sense to define

$$ \begin{align*}i_g = \min \{i < \theta \mathrel{|} g \in G_{D^{\alpha_g}_{\le i} \cup \{\alpha_g\}}\}.\end{align*} $$

As for , since , we agree to let and .

Remark 5.4. By possibly replacing $d:[\kappa ]^2\rightarrow \theta $ with the map $(\alpha ,\beta )\mapsto 1+d(\alpha ,\beta )$ , we may assume that $0\notin \operatorname {\mathrm {Im}}(d)$ . This tacit assumption will ensure that for every $g\in G$ , if $i_g=0$ , then either or g is an element of the cyclic group $\langle x_{\alpha _g}\rangle $ .

Notation 5.3 induces a well-ordering $\prec $ of G, as follows.

Definition 5.5. For $g\neq h$ in G, we shall let $g\prec h$ if one of the following holds:

  • $\alpha _g<\alpha _h$ ;

  • $\alpha _g=\alpha _h$ and $i_g<i_h$ ;

  • $\alpha _g=\alpha _h$ and $i_g=i_h$ and $g\in h$ .Footnote 5

Note that .

Lemma 5.6. For all $\gamma <\kappa $ and $i\le \theta $ , $G_{D^\gamma _{< i} \cup \{\gamma \}} \cap G_{\gamma } = G_{D^\gamma _{< i}}$ .

Proof. Let $\gamma <\kappa $ and $i\le \theta $ . As $G_\gamma =\bigcup _{j<\theta }G_{D^\gamma _{<j}}$ , it suffices to prove that for every $j\in (i,\theta ]$ ,

(I) $$ \begin{align} G_{D^\gamma_{< i} \cup \{\gamma\}} \cap G_{D^\gamma_{< j}} = G_{D^\gamma_{< i}}. \end{align} $$

The case $j=i+1$ is immediate from $(p)_4$ , and the case in which j is a limit ordinal follows from the fact that $G_{D^\gamma _{<j}}=\bigcup _{l<j}G_{D^\gamma _{<l}}$ for j limit. So, suppose that $j\in [i+1,\theta )$ is such that (I) holds. By $(p)_4$ , $G_{D^\gamma _{< j} \cup \{\gamma \}} \cap G_{D^\gamma _{\le j}} = G_{D^\gamma _{< j}}$ holds as well. Since $G_{D^\gamma _{< i} \cup \{\gamma \}}\subseteq G_{D^\gamma _{< j} \cup \{\gamma \}}$ , altogether,

$$ \begin{align*} G_{D^\gamma_{< i} \cup \{\gamma\}} \cap G_{D^\gamma_{\le j}} &= G_{D^\gamma_{< i} \cup \{\gamma\}} \cap G_{D^\gamma_{< j} \cup \{\gamma\}}\cap G_{D^\gamma_{\le j}} \\ &= G_{D^\gamma_{< i} \cup \{\gamma\}} \cap G_{D^\gamma_{< j}}\\ &= G_{D^\gamma_{< i}}, \end{align*} $$

as sought.

By the preceding, and since $D^\gamma _{< 0}=\emptyset $ , the group $\langle x_\gamma \rangle $ generated by $x_\gamma $ will have a trivial intersection with $G_\gamma $ . Another consequence of the preceding is as follows.

Corollary 5.7. For every $\gamma <\kappa $ , $G_\gamma \mathrel {\leq _{\mathrm {m}}} G_{\gamma +1}$ .

Proof. Let and $h \in G_{\gamma +1} \setminus G_\gamma $ for a given $\gamma <\kappa $ . Find a large enough $i< \theta $ such that $g \in G_{D^\gamma _{<i}}$ and $h \in G_{D^\gamma _{<i} \cup \{\gamma \}} \setminus G_{D^\gamma _{<i}}$ . Then, by $(p)_5$ ,

$$ \begin{align*}h^{-1}gh \in G_{D^\gamma_{<i} \cup \{\gamma\}} \setminus G_{D^\gamma_{<i}}.\end{align*} $$

Finally, Lemma 5.6 yields that $h^{-1}gh \notin G_\gamma $ .

The next consequence of our promises is the upcoming Lemma 5.9. In order to state it, we agree to say that a set $A\subseteq \kappa $ is absorbent if for every $\gamma \in A$ , there exists some $i\le \theta $ such that $A \cap \gamma = D^\gamma _{< i}$ . To exemplify,

Proposition 5.8. For all $\gamma <\kappa $ and $i\le \theta $ , $D^\gamma _{< i}$ is absorbent.

Proof. By Lemma 4.3.

Lemma 5.9. Suppose that $A,A'$ are absorbent subsets of $\kappa $ .

  1. (1) For every , $D^{\alpha _g}_{\leq i_g}\cup \{\alpha _g\}\subseteq A$ ;

  2. (2) For all $\gamma <\kappa $ , $i<\theta $ , and $g \in G_{D^\gamma _{<i}\cup \{\gamma \}}$ , we have $i_g<i$ ;

  3. (3) For all $\gamma <\kappa $ and , we have $i^\gamma _g = \max \{d(\alpha _g,\gamma ), i_g\}$ ;

  4. (4) $G_{A} \cap G_{A'} = G_{A \cap A'}$ .

Proof. (1) Let . Denote by $\gamma \in A$ the minimal ordinal such that $g \in G_{A \cap (\gamma +1)}$ . In particular, $g \notin G_{A \cap \gamma }$ and $\alpha _g\le \gamma $ . As A is absorbent, we may now fix $i\le \theta $ such that $A\cap \gamma =D^\gamma _{<i}$ . Consequently, $g \in G_{D^{\gamma }_{< i} \cup \{\gamma \}}$ . If $\alpha _g < \gamma $ , then $g \in G_{D^{\gamma }_{< i} \cup \{\gamma \}} \cap G_\gamma $ , which, by Lemma 5.6 is equal to $G_{D^{\gamma }_{< i}}= G_{A \cap \gamma }$ , contradicting the fact that $g \notin G_{A \cap \gamma }$ . So, $\alpha _g = \gamma $ , and hence, $g \in G_{D^{\alpha _g}_{< i} \cup \{\alpha _g\}}$ . As $G_{D^{\alpha _g}_{< i}\cup \{\alpha _g\}}=\bigcup _{j<i} G_{D^{\gamma }_{\leq j} \cup \{\gamma \}}$ , the definition of $i_g$ implies that $i_g < i$ . Altogether, $D^{\alpha _g}_{\leq i_g}\cup \{\alpha _g\}\subseteq D^\gamma _{<i}\cup \{\gamma \}\subseteq A$ .

(2) Let $\gamma <\kappa $ , $i<\theta $ , and $g \in G_{D^\gamma _{<i}\cup \{\gamma \}}$ . By Clause (1), $D^{\alpha _g}_{\le i_g}\cup \{\alpha _g\}\subseteq D^\gamma _{<i}\cup \{\gamma \}$ . If $\alpha _g=\gamma $ , then the inclusion implies that $i_g<i$ . Otherwise, $\alpha _g\in D^\gamma _{<i}$ , and then Lemma 4.3 implies that

$$ \begin{align*}D^{\alpha_g}_{\le i_g}=(D^{\alpha_g}_{\le i_g}\cup\{\alpha_g\})\cap\alpha_g\subseteq D^\gamma_{<i}\cap\alpha_g=D^{\alpha_g}_{<i},\end{align*} $$

so, again $i_g<i$ .

(3) Let $\gamma <\kappa $ and . Clearly, $\alpha _g<\gamma $ . Also, recalling Notation 5.3, $g\in G_{D^\gamma _{\le i^\gamma _g}}$ . So, Clause (1) together with Proposition 5.8 imply that $D^{\alpha _g}_{\le i_g}\cup \{\alpha _g\}\subseteq D^\gamma _{\le i^\gamma _g}$ . In particular, $d(\alpha _g,\gamma ) \leq i^\gamma _g$ , and, by Lemma 4.3, also

$$ \begin{align*}D^{\alpha_g}_{\le i_g}=(D^{\alpha_g}_{\le i_g}\cup\{\alpha_g\})\cap\alpha_g\subseteq D^\gamma_{\leq i^\gamma_g} \cap \alpha_g = D^{\alpha_g}_{\leq i^\gamma_g},\end{align*} $$

and hence, $i_g \leq i^\gamma _g$ . This shows that $i=\max \{d(\alpha _g,\gamma ), i_g\}$ is $\le i^\gamma _g$ . However, since $\alpha _g\in D^\gamma _{\le d(\alpha _g,\gamma )}\subseteq D^\gamma _{\le i}$ , Lemma 4.3 implies that

$$ \begin{align*}D^{\alpha_g}_{\le i_g}\subseteq D^{\alpha_g}_{\le i}=D^\gamma_{\le i}\cap\alpha_g,\end{align*} $$

and hence, $g \in G_{D^{\alpha _g}_{\le i} \cup \{\alpha _g\}}\subseteq G_{D^\gamma _{\le i}}$ . Consequently, $i_g^\gamma \le i$ .

(4) By Clause (1), for every $g \in G_{A} \cap G_{A'}$ , either (and then $g \in G_\emptyset \subseteq G_{A\cap A'}$ ), or $D^{\alpha _g}_{\leq i_g}\cup \{\alpha _g\} \subseteq A \cap A'$ , and then $g\in G_{D^{\alpha _g}_{\leq i_g}\cup \{\alpha _g\}}\subseteq G_{A\cap A'}$ by the definition of $i_g$ and $\alpha _g$ . The other inclusion is trivial.

Corollary 5.10. For all $\beta \le \gamma <\kappa $ , for all $j<i<\theta $ , for all $g,h \in G_{D^\gamma _{<j} \cup \{\gamma \}} \setminus G_\gamma $ , if $g\equiv _{{D^\gamma _{<i} \cap \beta }}h$ , then $g\equiv _{D^\gamma _{<j} \cap \beta }h$ .

Proof. Let $\beta \le \gamma <\kappa $ such that $\gamma \ge \theta $ and let $j< i<\theta $ . Suppose that $g,h \in G_{D^\gamma _{<j} \cup \{\gamma \}} \setminus G_\gamma $ are such that $g\not \equiv _{D^\gamma _{<j} \cap \beta }h$ , and we shall prove by induction on $l\in [j,i]$ that

(II) $$ \begin{align} g\not\equiv_{D^\gamma_{<l} \cap \beta}h. \end{align} $$

Recalling Clause (4) of Lemma 5.9, $G_{D^\gamma _{<j} \cup \{\gamma \}} \cap G_\gamma = G_{D^\gamma _{<j}}$ , so we infer that $g,h \in G_{D^\gamma _{<j} \cup \{\gamma \}} \setminus G_{D^\gamma _{<j}}$ .

The case $l=j$ is trivial, and the case in which l is a limit ordinal follows from continuity. So, suppose that $l\in [j,i)$ is such that (II) holds, and we shall prove that $g\not \equiv _{D^\gamma _{\le l} \cap \beta }h$ . W.l.o.g. $l \geq 1$ , otherwise , so both relations $\equiv _{D^\gamma _{< 0}}$ and $\equiv _{D^\gamma _{\leq 0}}$ are the identity on $G_{D^\gamma _{\leq 0} \cup \{\gamma \}}$ .

By $(p)_6$ , the group $G_{D^\gamma _{\le l} \cup \{\gamma \}}$ was given by Lemma 3.4 when invoked with $H = G_{D^\gamma _{< l}}$ , $K = G_{D^\gamma _{\leq l}}$ and $L = G_{D^\gamma _{<l} \cup \{\gamma \}}$ . Consider $K'=G_{D^\gamma _{\le l} \cap \beta }$ , which is a subgroup of K, and then let $H'=K' \cap L$ . By Lemma 5.9(4),

$$ \begin{align*}H'= G_{D^\gamma_{\le l} \cap \beta} \cap G_{D^\gamma_{<l} \cup \{\gamma\}} = G_{D^\gamma_{<l} \cap \beta},\end{align*} $$

meaning that (II) asserts that $g\not \sim _{H'}h$ .

As $g,h\in G_{D^\gamma _{< j} \cup \{\gamma \}}\subseteq L$ , and $H'=K' \cap L=K'\cap H$ (since $K \cap L = H$ ), Clause (F) of Lemma 3.4 implies that $g\not \sim _{K'}h$ . That is, $g\not \equiv _{D^\gamma _{\le l} \cap \beta }h$ , as sought.

Notation 5.11. As a last step of preparation, we fix a surjection $ \vec \pi =(\pi _0,\pi _1,\pi _2, \pi _3,\pi _4)$ from $\kappa $ to $\kappa \times \kappa \times \kappa \times \kappa \times \{1,-1\}$ ; that is, for all $\eta _0,\eta _1,\eta _2,\eta _3\in \kappa $ and $ {\varepsilon } \in \{1,-1\}$ , there exists a $\xi <\kappa $ such that

$$ \begin{align*}\vec \pi(\xi)=(\pi_0(\xi),\pi_1(\xi), \pi_2(\xi), \pi_3(\xi), \pi_4(\xi)) = (\eta_0,\eta_1,\eta_2,\eta_3,{\varepsilon}).\end{align*} $$

5.2 The recursive construction

We are now ready to start the recursive process. We start by letting $x_0$ generate an infinite cyclic group (i.e., $\mathbb {Z}$ ), and we assume this group $G_1$ has underlying set $\omega $ . Hereafter, we shall not worry about $(p)_2$ since it is clear it may be secured. Next, suppose that $\gamma \in [1,\kappa )$ is such that $G_\gamma $ has already been defined and satisfies all of our promises. Note that $(p)_3$ implies that for every $\beta < \gamma $ , the group $G_{\beta +1} = \bigcup _{i< \theta } G_{D^\beta _{<i} \cup \{\beta \}}$ is torsion-free, and so is $G_\gamma = \bigcup _{\beta < \gamma } G_{\beta +1}$ . To construct $G_{\gamma +1}$ , we first let $x_\gamma =\min (\kappa \setminus G_\gamma )$ , and now we need to describe the group relationship between $x_\gamma $ and the elements of $G_\gamma $ . We will define $\langle G_{D^\gamma _{< i} \cup \{ \gamma \}}\mathrel {|} i < \theta \rangle $ by recursion on $i<\theta $ , in such a way that all of our promises are kept.

Here we go. As $D^\gamma _{< 0} = D^\gamma _{\leq 0} = \emptyset $ (recall Remark 5.4), we mean , and we let $G_{D^\gamma _{\leq 0} \cup \{\gamma \}} = G_{\{\gamma \}}$ be the infinite group $\mathbb Z$ generated by $x_\gamma $ . Note that vacuously holds. Moving on, suppose that $i<\theta $ is such that $G_{D^\gamma _{<i}\cup \{\gamma \}}$ has already been defined. For all $j\le i$ and $\beta \le \gamma $ , let $E^\gamma _{< j,\beta }$ be the restriction of the equivalence relation ${\equiv _{(D^\gamma _{< j} \cap \beta )}}$ to $G_{D^\gamma _{< j} \cup \{\gamma \}}$ . Next, use Definition 5.5 to define a transversal $T^\gamma _{< j, \beta }$ for those equivalence classes of $E^\gamma _{< j, \beta }$ that lie in $G_{D^\gamma _{< j} \cup \{\gamma \}} \setminus G_\gamma = G_{D^\gamma _{< j} \cup \{\gamma \}} \setminus G_{D^\gamma _{< j}}$ , as follows:

$$ \begin{align*}T^\gamma_{< j, \beta}= \{\min([g]_{E^\gamma_{< j, \beta}},{\prec}) \mathrel{|} g \in G_{D^\gamma_{<j} \cup \{\gamma\}} \setminus G_\gamma \}.\end{align*} $$

Lemma 5.12. For all $j\le i$ and $\alpha \le \beta \le \gamma $ ,

  1. (1) $ E^\gamma _{< i, \beta } \mathbin \upharpoonright (G_{D^\gamma _{< j} \cup \{\gamma \}} \setminus G_\gamma ) = E^\gamma _{< j, \beta } \mathbin \upharpoonright (G_{D^\gamma _{< j} \cup \{\gamma \}} \setminus G_\gamma )$ ;

  2. (2) $T^\gamma _{< j,\beta } \subseteq T^\gamma _{< i,\beta }$ ;

  3. (3) $T^\gamma _{< i,\alpha } \supseteq T^\gamma _{< i,\beta }$ .

Proof. (1) By Corollary 5.10.

(2) Let $t \in T^\gamma _{<j,\beta }$ . As $G_{(D^\gamma _{< j} \cap \beta )}h^{\pm 1} G_{(D^\gamma _{< j} \cap \beta )}\subseteq G_\gamma $ for every $h\in G_\gamma $ , it is the case that $[g]_{E^\gamma _{< j,\beta }}$ is disjoint from $G_\gamma $ for every $g \in G_{D^\gamma _{<j} \cup \{\gamma \}} \setminus G_\gamma $ . In particular, $t\in G_{\gamma +1}\setminus G_\gamma $ , so that $i_t = i^{\gamma +1}_t < j$ . Therefore, by Clause (1),

$$ \begin{align*}[t]_{E^\gamma_{<i,\beta}} \cap G_{D^\gamma_{<j} \cup \{\gamma\}} = [t]_{E^\gamma_{<j,\beta}}.\end{align*} $$

For every $g \in [t]_{E^\gamma _{<i,\beta }} \setminus G_{D^\gamma _{<j} \cup \{\gamma \}}$ , we have $i_g=i_g^{\gamma +1} \ge j>i_t$ , and then Definition 5.5 implies that $t \prec g$ . Altogether,

$$ \begin{align*}\min([t]_{E^\gamma_{< i, \beta}},{\prec}) = \min([t]_{E^\gamma_{< j, \beta}},{\prec}) = t.\end{align*} $$

(3) This is clear from the definition of $T^\gamma _{< i, \alpha }$ , $T^\gamma _{< i, \beta }$ , as the equivalence relation $E^\gamma _{< j, \alpha }$ is a refinement of $E^\gamma _{< j, \beta }$ .

Our next goal is to the define the system $S = \{ (h_\sigma ,a_\sigma , b_\sigma ,b^{\prime }_{\sigma } )\mathrel {|} \sigma \in \Sigma \}$ that will yield the definition of $G_{D^\gamma _{\le i}\cup \{\gamma \}}$ , as per $(p)_6$ . We start with a rough approximation $\Sigma ^{++}$ of $\Sigma $ , we then refine it to $\Sigma ^+\subseteq \Sigma ^{++}$ , and finally we find the appropriate $\Sigma \subseteq \Sigma ^+$ .

Definition 5.13. Let

  • $\Sigma ^{++} = \{ (a,t)\mathrel {|} a\in G_{D^\gamma _{\le i}}\setminus G_{D^\gamma _{< i}},~\alpha _a \in D^\gamma _{\leq i} \setminus D^\gamma _{<i},~t \in T^\gamma _{< i,\alpha _a}\}$ ;

  • $\Sigma ^+=\{(a,t) \in \Sigma ^{++}\mathrel {|} \forall l<4\,[\pi _l(c(\alpha _a,\gamma )) \in G_\gamma ]\}$ .

Definition 5.14. For each $\sigma =(a,t) \in \Sigma ^+$ , we attach the following objects:

We then let $\Sigma $ be the set of all $\sigma \in \Sigma ^+$ for which all of the following hold:

  1. (1) $\max \{\alpha _{y_{\sigma ,0}}, \alpha _{y_{\sigma ,1}}, \alpha _{z_\sigma } \} < \alpha _{a_\sigma }$ ;

  2. (2) $\max \{i_t,i^\gamma _{y_{\sigma ,0}}, i^\gamma _{y_{\sigma ,1}}\} < i^\gamma _{z_\sigma }<i$ (in particular, $i^\gamma _{z_\sigma }\ge 1$ );

  3. (3) $h_\sigma \in G_{D^\gamma _{< i}}$ .

Remark 5.15. Clause (1) implies that $y_{\sigma ,0}, y_{\sigma ,1}, z_\sigma \in G_{\alpha _{a_\sigma }}$ , and Clause (2) implies that, for some $j < i$ , $y_{\sigma ,0},y_{\sigma ,1}\in G_{D^\gamma _{<j}}$ , $t \in G_{D^\gamma _{<j} \cup \{\gamma \}}$ , and $z_\sigma \notin G_{D^\gamma _{<j}}$ .

Definition 5.16. Denote $H = G_{D^\gamma _{< i}}$ , $K = G_{D^\gamma _{\le i}}$ , $L = G_{D^\gamma _{< i} \cup \{\gamma \}}$ , and

$$ \begin{align*}S = \{ (h_\sigma,a_\sigma, b_\sigma,b^{\prime}_{\sigma} )\mathrel{|} \sigma \in \Sigma \}.\end{align*} $$

Lemma 5.17. $H \leq K$ , $H \mathrel {\leq _{\mathrm {m}}} L$ , $K \cap L = H$ and $S\subseteq H \times (K \setminus H) \times (L\setminus H)\times (L\setminus H)$ .

Proof. It is clear that $H=G_{D^\gamma _{< i}}\le G_{D^\gamma _{\le i}}=K$ . By $(p)_5$ , $H\mathrel {\leq _{\mathrm {m}}} L$ , and by $(p)_4$ , $K\cap L=H$ .

Next, let $\sigma \in \Sigma $ . By Definition 5.14(3), $h_\sigma \in H$ . Since $\sigma \in \Sigma ^{++}$ , $a_\sigma \in K\setminus H$ . Recall that $t\in T^\gamma _{< i, \alpha }\subseteq G_{D^\gamma _{< i} \cup \{\gamma \}} \setminus G_\gamma =L\setminus G_\gamma $ . By Lemma 5.9(4), $ H=L \cap G_\gamma $ , and hence, $t\in L\setminus H$ . By Definition 5.14(2), $y_{\sigma ,0},y_{\sigma ,1},z_\sigma $ are in $H \le L$ , so, altogether, $b_\sigma $ and $b_\sigma '$ are in L as well. Since $t\notin H$ , we get that $b_\sigma \notin H$ . Finally, to see that $b_\sigma '\notin H$ , it suffices to verify that $b_\sigma ' \in G_{D^\gamma _{\leq j} \cup \{\gamma \}} \setminus G_{D^\gamma _{\leq j}}$ for some $j<i$ , since $H=G_{D^\gamma _{< i}} \leq G_\gamma $ , and $G_{D^\gamma _{\leq j} \cup \{\gamma \}} \cap G_\gamma = G_{D^\gamma _{\leq j}}$ by Lemma 5.9(4).

By the definition of $\Sigma $ and since $y_{\sigma ,0},y_{\sigma ,1} \in G_{D^\gamma _{< i^\gamma _{z_\sigma }}}$ , we have that $y_{\sigma ,0} \cdot t^{{\varepsilon }_\sigma } \cdot y_{\sigma ,1} \in G_{D^\gamma _{< i^\gamma _{z_\sigma }} \cup \{\gamma \}} \setminus G_{D^\gamma _{< i^\gamma _{z_\sigma }}}$ and $z_\sigma \in G_{D^\gamma _{\leq i^\gamma _{z_\sigma }}} \setminus G_{D^\gamma _{< i^\gamma _{z_\sigma }}}$ . By $(p)_6$ , $G_{D^\gamma _{\le i^\gamma _{z_\sigma } \cup \{\gamma \}}}$ has been obtained by invoking Lemma 3.4 (note that $i^\gamma _{z_\sigma } \geq 1$ necessarily) with $\bar K = G_{D^\gamma _{\le i^\gamma _{z_\sigma }}}$ , $\bar L = G_{D^\gamma _{< i^\gamma _{z_\sigma }}\cup \{\gamma \}}$ , and $\bar H = G_{D^\gamma _{< i^\gamma _{z_\sigma }}}$ , and then Clause (D) of that lemma implies that

$$ \begin{align*}(y_{\sigma,0} \cdot t^{{\varepsilon}_\sigma} \cdot y_{\sigma,1}) \cdot z_\sigma \cdot (y_{\sigma,0} \cdot t^{{\varepsilon}_\sigma} \cdot y_{\sigma,1}) \notin \bar K = G_{D^\gamma_{\le i^\gamma_{z_\sigma}}},\end{align*} $$

and then the fact that $z_\sigma \in G_{D^\gamma _{\le i^\gamma _{z_\sigma }}}$ implies that

$$ \begin{align*}b_\sigma' = (y_{\sigma,0} \cdot t^{{\varepsilon}_\sigma} \cdot y_{\sigma,1}) \cdot z_\sigma \cdot (y_{\sigma,0} \cdot t^{{\varepsilon}_\sigma} \cdot y_{\sigma,1}) \cdot z_\sigma \notin\bar K = G_{D^\gamma_{\le i^\gamma_{z_\sigma}}},\end{align*} $$

as sought.

Lemma 5.18. For every $\sigma \in \Sigma $ , $b_\sigma \not \sim _H b_\sigma '$ .

Proof. Let $\sigma = (a,t)$ in $\Sigma $ . Set

$$ \begin{align*}j=\max\{i_t,i^\gamma_{y_{\sigma,0}}, i^\gamma_{y_{\sigma,1}}\}.\end{align*} $$

From $\sigma \in \Sigma $ , we infer that $j < i^\gamma _{z_\sigma } < i$ , and

$$ \begin{align*}y_{\sigma,0}, y_{\sigma,1} \in G_{D^\gamma_{\le j}} \subseteq G_{D^\gamma_{\le j} \cup \{ \gamma \}}.\end{align*} $$

Recall that $t\in T^\gamma _{< i, \alpha _a}\subseteq G_{D^\gamma _{< i} \cup \{\gamma \}} \setminus G_\gamma $ ; therefore,

$$ \begin{align*}y_{\sigma,0} \cdot t^{{\varepsilon}_\sigma} \cdot y_{\sigma,1} \in G_{D^\gamma_{\le j} \cup \{ \gamma \}} \leq G_{D^\gamma_{<i^\gamma_{z_\sigma}} \cup \{ \gamma \}}.\end{align*} $$

By Lemma 5.9(4), $ G_{D^\gamma _{<i^\gamma _{z_\sigma }}}=G_{D^\gamma _{<i^\gamma _{z_\sigma }} \cup \{ \gamma \}} \cap G_\gamma $ , so since $t\notin G_\gamma $ ,

$$ \begin{align*}y_{\sigma,0} \cdot t^{{\varepsilon}_\sigma} \cdot y_{\sigma,1} \in G_{D^\gamma_{<i^\gamma_{z_\sigma}} \cup \{ \gamma \}} \setminus G_{D^\gamma_{<i^\gamma_{z_\sigma}}}.\end{align*} $$

By $(p)_6$ , $G_{D^\gamma _{\le i^\gamma _{z_\sigma } \cup \{\gamma \}}}$ has been obtained by invoking Lemma 3.4 (note that $i^\gamma _{z_\sigma } \geq 1$ necessarily) with $\bar K = G_{D^\gamma _{\le i^\gamma _{z_\sigma }}}$ , $\bar L = G_{D^\gamma _{< i^\gamma _{z_\sigma }} \cup \{\gamma \}}$ , and $\bar H = G_{D^\gamma _{< i^\gamma _{z_\sigma }}}$ , and then Clause (C) of that lemma together with the facts that $y_{\sigma ,0} \cdot t^{{\varepsilon }_\sigma } \cdot y_{\sigma ,1} \in \bar L\setminus \bar H$ and $z_\sigma \in \bar K \setminus \bar H$ imply that for $b=b^*=y_{\sigma ,0} \cdot t^{{\varepsilon }_\sigma } \cdot y_{\sigma ,1}$ and $z=z_\sigma $ , it is the case that $b^*z \not \sim _{\bar K}bzbz$ . That is,

$$ \begin{align*}b_\sigma \not\sim_{G_{D^\gamma_{\leq i^\gamma_{z_\sigma}}}} b_\sigma',\end{align*} $$

which is the same as $\neg (b_\sigma \mathrel {E^\gamma _{< i^\gamma _{z_\sigma }+1, \gamma }} b_\sigma ')$ . By Lemma 5.12(1),

$$ \begin{align*}E^\gamma_{< i, \gamma} \mathbin\upharpoonright (G_{D^\gamma_{< i^\gamma_{z_\sigma}+1} \cup \{\gamma\}} \setminus G_\gamma) = E^\gamma_{< i^\gamma_{z_\sigma}+1, \gamma} \mathbin\upharpoonright (G_{D^\gamma_{< i^\gamma_{z_\sigma}+1} \cup \{\gamma\}} \setminus G_\gamma),\end{align*} $$

and hence, $b_\sigma \not \sim _{G_{D^\gamma _{< i} \cap \gamma }} b_\sigma '$ , which concludes our proof (since $G_ {D^\gamma _{< i} \cap \gamma } =H$ ).

Lemma 5.19. For all $\sigma \neq \sigma ^*$ in $\Sigma $ , at least one of the following holds:

  1. (⊝) a $a_\sigma \not \sim _H a_{\sigma ^*}$ ;

  2. (⊝) b $b_\sigma \not \sim _H b_{\sigma ^*}$ ;

  3. (⊝) c $b_\sigma = b_{\sigma ^*}$ and $a_\sigma \neq a_{\sigma ^*}$ ;

  4. (⊝) d all of the following hold:

    1. (i) $\alpha _{a_\sigma } = \alpha _{a_{\sigma ^*}}$ (so $K_{\sigma } = K_{\sigma ^*}$ );

    2. (ii) $a_\sigma , a_{\sigma ^*} \in K_\sigma \setminus H$ ;

    3. (iii) $b_\sigma \not \sim _{H_\sigma }b_{\sigma ^*}$ , where $H_\sigma = K_\sigma \cap H$ ;

    4. (iv) $b_{\sigma }\not \sim _H b^{\prime }_{\sigma ^*}$ ;

    5. (v) $K \models (K_\sigma \setminus H) \cdot (H \setminus K_\sigma ) \cdot (K_\sigma \setminus H) \subseteq (K \setminus H)$ .

Proof. We start with two general claims.

Claim 5.19.1. Suppose $a,a^* \in G_{D^\gamma _{\leq i}}$ are such that $\alpha _a <\alpha _{a^*} <\gamma $ and $\alpha _a,\alpha _{a^*} \in D^\gamma _{\leq i} \setminus D^\gamma _{<i}$ . Then $a\not \sim _H a^*$ .

Proof. Since $\alpha _a, \alpha _{a^*} \in D^\gamma _{\leq i} \setminus D^\gamma _{<i}$ , Lemma 5.9(1) implies that a and $a^*$ are not in $G_{D^\gamma _{< i}}$ . We shall prove by induction on $\beta \in [\alpha _{a^*},\gamma ]$ that

(III) $$ \begin{align} a \notin G_{D^\gamma_{< i} \cap \beta}(a^*)^{\pm 1} G_{D^\gamma_{< i} \cap \beta}. \end{align} $$

The base case $\beta =\alpha _{a^*}$ follows from the following constellation:

  • $a \in G_{D^\gamma _{\leq i}} \cap G_{\alpha _a+1} = G_{D^\gamma _{\leq i} \cap (\alpha _a +1)} \subseteq G_{\alpha _a +1} \subseteq G_{\alpha _{a^*}}$ ,

  • $a^* \in G_{\alpha _{a^*}+1} \setminus G_{\alpha _{a^*}}$ , and

  • $G_{D^\gamma _{< i} \cap \alpha _{a^*}} \subseteq G_{\alpha _{a^*}}$ .

The case that $\beta $ is a limit follows from continuity, so suppose that $\beta \in [\alpha _{a^*},\gamma ]$ satisfies (III), and we shall show that

$$ \begin{align*}a \notin G_{D^\gamma_{< i} \cap(\beta+1)}(a^*)^{\pm 1} G_{D^\gamma_{< i} \cap(\beta+1)}.\end{align*} $$

To avoid trivialities, we may assume that $\beta \in D^\gamma _{< i}$ , so that, by Lemma 4.3, $D^\gamma _{< i} \cap \beta = D^\beta _{<i}$ and $D^\gamma _{\leq i} \cap \beta = D^\beta _{\le i}$ . Therefore, $\alpha _a,\alpha _{a^*} \in D^\beta _{\leq i} \setminus D^\beta _{<i}$ . So Notation 5.3 together with Lemma 5.9(4) imply that $a \in G_{D^\gamma _{\leq i} \cap (\alpha _a+1)}\subseteq G_{D^\beta _{\le i}}$ and $a^* \in G_{D^\gamma _{\leq i} \cap (\alpha _{a^*}+1)}\subseteq G_{D^\beta _{\le i}}$ . As $\alpha _a,\alpha _{a^*}\notin D^\beta _{<i}$ , Lemma 5.9(1) implies that $a,a^* \notin G_{D^\beta _{<i}}$ . Altogether,

$$ \begin{align*}i^\beta_a= i= i^\beta_{a^*}.\end{align*} $$

Now $\beta> \alpha _{a^*} \geq 0$ and $i \geq 1$ , since $\beta \in D^\gamma _{<i}$ , so $(p)_6$ tells us that $G_{D^\beta _{\leq i} \cup \{\beta \}}$ was constructed by invoking Lemma 3.4 with $\bar H=G_{D^\beta _{<i}}$ , $\bar K=G_{D^\beta _{\le i}}$ and $\bar L=G_{D^\beta _{<i}\cup \{\beta \}}$ . By Lemma 5.9,

$$ \begin{align*}\bar L \cap\bar K = G_{D^\beta_{<i} \cup \{\beta\}} \cap G_{D^\beta_{\leq i}} = G_{D^\beta_{<i}} =\bar H,\end{align*} $$

so, taking (III) into account, Clause (E) of Lemma 3.4 implies that

$$ \begin{align*}a \notin \bar L(a^*)^{\pm 1} \bar L.\end{align*} $$

However, $\bar L = G_{D^\beta _{< i} \cup \{\beta \}} = G_{D^\gamma _{< i} \cap (\beta +1)}$ , so we are done.

Claim 5.19.2. Let $\alpha \in D^\gamma _{\leq i} \setminus D^\gamma _{<i}$ and $a,a^* \in G_{D^\gamma _{\le i} \cap (\alpha +1)} \setminus G_{\alpha }$ .

  1. (1) For every $g \in G_{D^\gamma _{<i} \cap (\beta +1)} \setminus G_{D^\gamma _{<i} \cap \beta }$ with $\beta \in D^\gamma _{<i} \setminus \alpha $ , we have $a\cdot g \cdot a^* \notin G_{D^\gamma _{<i} \cap (\beta +1)}$ ;

  2. (2) For every $g \in G_{D^\gamma _{<i}} \setminus G_\alpha $ , we have $a \cdot g \cdot a^* \notin G_{D^\gamma _{<i}}$ .

Proof. (1) Fix g and $\beta $ as above. Now in the same line of reasoning as in Claim 5.19.1, $D^\gamma _{< i} \cap \beta = D^\beta _{< i}$ , $D^\gamma _{\le i} \cap (\beta +1) = D^\beta _{\le i} \cup \{\beta \}$ . Therefore, $G_{D^\gamma _{<i} \cap (\beta +1)}$ is equal to $G_{D^\beta _{<i} \cup \{\beta \}}$ , and the latter (recalling $\beta \geq 1$ , and $i \geq 1$ which is true since $\beta \in D^\gamma _{<i}$ ) was obtained by invoking Lemma 3.4 with $\bar H = G_{D^\beta _{<i}}$ , $\bar K= G_{D^\beta _{\le i}}$ , $\bar L = G_{D^\beta _{<i} \cup \{\beta \}}$ (where $g \in \bar L \setminus \bar H$ ). So just apply (the parallel of) Clause (D) of the said Lemma.

(2) Suppose not, and let g be a counterexample. Let $\beta $ be minimal such that $g \in G_{\beta +1}$ . By Lemma 5.9(4), $G_{D^\gamma _{<i}} \cap G_{\beta +1} = G_{D^\gamma _{<i} \cap (\beta +1)}$ , and hence, $g \in G_{D^\gamma _{<i} \cap (\beta +1)} \setminus G_{D^\gamma _{<i} \cap \beta }$ . Then, By Lemma 5.9(1), $\beta \in D^\gamma _{<i}$ , so that $\beta \in D^\gamma _{<i} \setminus \alpha $ . As $a\cdot g \cdot a^* \in G_{\alpha +1} \cdot G_{\beta +1} \cdot G_{\alpha +1} = G_{\beta +1}$ , and recalling that $a \cdot g \cdot a^* \in G_{D^\gamma _{<i}}$ , we infer that $a\cdot g \cdot a^* \in G_{D^\gamma _{<i}} \cap G_{\beta +1} = G_{D^\gamma _{<i} \cap (\beta +1)}$ , contradicting Clause (1).

Suppose now that $\sigma =(a,t)$ and $\sigma ^* = (a^*,t^*)$ are two distinct elements of $\Sigma $ . We assume that alternatives $(\circleddash )_a$ $(\circleddash )_c$ fail, and we shall verify alternative $(\circleddash )_d$ . Note that our assumptions have the following immediate consequences.

Claim 5.19.3. $b_\sigma \sim _H b_{\sigma ^*}$ , $t\neq t^*$ , and $\alpha _a=\alpha _{a^*}$ .

Proof. The first part follows from the failure of alternative $(\circleddash )_b$ , and the last part follows from failure of alternative $(\circleddash )_a$ together with Claim 5.19.1.

In addition, if t were to equal $t^*$ , Definition 5.14 (using $\alpha _a=\alpha _{a^*}$ ) would have implied that alternative $(\circleddash )_c$ holds. So $t\neq t^*$ .

It thus follows from Definition 5.14 that

$$ \begin{align*}(h_{\sigma},y_{\sigma,0},y_{\sigma_1},z_{\sigma},K_{\sigma})=(h_{\sigma^*},y_{\sigma^*,0},y_{\sigma^*_1},z_{\sigma^*},K_{\sigma^*}).\end{align*} $$

Consequently,

$$ \begin{align*}\max\{i_t,i_{t^*},i^\gamma_{y_{\sigma,0}},i^\gamma_{y_{\sigma^*,0}}, i^\gamma_{y_{\sigma,1}},i^\gamma_{y_{\sigma^*,1}} \} < i^\gamma_{z_\sigma},\end{align*} $$

and hence, the next two elements are in $G_{D^\gamma _{< i^\gamma _{z_\sigma } \cup \{\gamma \}}}$ :

  • $b=y_{\sigma ,0} \cdot t^{{\varepsilon }_\sigma } \cdot y_{\sigma ,1}$ ,

  • $b^*=y_{\sigma ^*,0} \cdot (t^*)^{{\varepsilon }_{\sigma ^*}} \cdot y_{\sigma ^*,1}$ ;

moreover,

(IV) $$ \begin{align} b,b^* \notin G_{D^\gamma_{< i^\gamma_{z_\sigma}}}, \end{align} $$

since $y_{\sigma ,0},y_{\sigma ,1},y_{\sigma ^*,0},y_{\sigma ^*,1} \in G_{D^\gamma _{< i^\gamma _{z_\sigma }}}$ . Note that

$$ \begin{align*}K_\sigma = G_{D^\gamma_{\le i}} \cap G_{(\alpha_a+1)} = G_{D^\gamma_{\le i} \cap (\alpha_a+1)}\end{align*} $$

and

$$ \begin{align*}H_\sigma = K_\sigma \cap H = G_{D^\gamma_{\le i} \cap (\alpha_a+1)} \cap G_{D^\gamma_{<i}} = G_{D^\gamma_{<i} \cap \alpha_a}\end{align*} $$

by Lemma 5.9(4).

As $\sigma \in \Sigma $ , it is also the case that $z_\sigma \in G_{D^\gamma _{\leq i^\gamma _{z_\sigma }}} \leq G_{D^\gamma _{< i}} = H$ and

$$ \begin{align*}y_{\sigma,0} \cdot t^{{\varepsilon}_\sigma} \cdot y_{\sigma,1} = b_\sigma \cdot z_\sigma^{-1},\end{align*} $$

so that $b\sim _H b_\sigma $ . Likewise, $b^*\sim _H b_{\sigma ^*}$ . Recalling that $b_\sigma \sim _H b_{\sigma ^*}$ , altogether

$$ \begin{align*}b \sim_H b^*.\end{align*} $$

Now, $(p)_6$ tells us that $G_{D^\gamma _{\leq i^\gamma _{z_\sigma }} \cup \{\gamma \}}$ was constructed by invoking Lemma 3.4 with $\bar H=G_{D^\gamma _{<i^\gamma _{z_\sigma }}}$ , $\bar K=G_{D^\gamma _{\le i^\gamma _{z_\sigma }}}$ and $\bar L=G_{D^\gamma _{<i^\gamma _{z_\sigma }}\cup \{\gamma \}}$ (again, $i^\gamma _{z_\sigma } \geq 1$ , by Clause (2) of Definition 5.14). Trivially, $z_\sigma \notin \bar H$ . In addition, $b,b^*\notin \bar H$ by (IV). Thus, Clause (C) of that lemma implies that $ b^* \cdot z_{\sigma ^*} \not \sim _{\bar K} b\cdot z_\sigma \cdot b \cdot z_\sigma $ , and hence, $b^{\prime }_\sigma \not \sim _{\bar K} b_{\sigma ^*}$ . Finally, $b^{\prime }_\sigma \not \sim _{H} b_{\sigma ^*}$ (i.e., $b^{\prime }_\sigma \not \sim _{G_{D^\gamma _{<i}}} b_{\sigma ^*}$ ) by Lemma 5.12(1).

However, by the definition of $T^\gamma _{<i, \alpha _{a_\sigma }}$ , we get that $t\not \sim _{K_\sigma \cap H} t^*$ . As $ K_\sigma \cap H = G_{D^\gamma _{\le i} \cap (\alpha _{a_\sigma }+1)} \cap G_{D^\gamma _{< i} } = G_{D^\gamma _{< i} \cap (\alpha _{a_\sigma }+1)}= G_{D^\gamma _{< i} \cap \alpha _{a_\sigma }}$ , we also get that $b_\sigma \not \sim _{K_\sigma \cap H} b_{\sigma ^*}$ , since $z_\sigma =z_{\sigma ^*}$ , $y_{\sigma ,0}$ , $y_{\sigma ,1} \in G_{D^\gamma _{<i} \cap \alpha _{a_\sigma }}$ (by recalling the definition of $\Sigma $ ). At this stage, it remains to check Clause (v), but this follows from Claim 5.19.2(2).

By Lemmas 5.17, 5.18 and 5.19, the tuple $(H,K,L,S)$ satisfies all of the assumptions of Lemma 3.4. Adhering to $(p)_6$ , we then let $G_{D^\gamma _{\le i} \cup \{\gamma \}}$ be the outcome $M^*$ of Lemma 3.4 when invoked with this tuple. By Clause (A) of that lemma, $K,L \leq M^*$ ,

$$ \begin{align*}M^* \models K \cap L = H,\end{align*} $$

and $M^*$ is generated by $K \cup L = G_{D^\gamma _{\leq i}} \cup G_{D^\gamma _{<i} \cup \{\gamma \}}$ . This means that $M^*$ is generated by the set of generators $\{x_\beta \mathrel {|} \beta \in D^\gamma _{\leq i} \cup \{\gamma \}\}$ , and hence, $(p)_4$ is preserved. Also, Clause (B) implies that $K \mathrel {\leq _{\mathrm {m}}} M^*$ ; hence, $(p)_5$ is preserved as well.

Our promise $(p)_3$ implies that $L=G_{D^\gamma _{< i} \cup \{\gamma \}}$ and

$$ \begin{align*}\bigcup_{\beta < \gamma} G_{\beta+1} = \bigcup_{\beta < \gamma} \bigcup_{j<\theta} G_{D^\beta_{<j} \cup \{\beta\}}\end{align*} $$

are both torsion-free. In particular, K, being a subgroup of $G_\gamma = \bigcup _{\beta < \gamma } G_{\beta +1}$ is torsion-free as well. It now follows from Clause (G) of Lemma 3.4 that we have maintained $(p)_3$ .

This completes the description of the recursive construction of our group G.

5.3 Verification

We now turn to show that G is an n-Shelah group for $n=10120$ .

Lemma 5.20. Let $Z\in [G]^\kappa $ . Then $Z^{10120}=G$ .

Proof. By possibly thinning out (using the pigeonhole principle), we may assume the existence of some $j<\theta $ such that $i_z=j$ for all $z\in Z$ . Set , so that $A\in [\kappa ]^\kappa $ . For each $\alpha \in A$ , pick $z_\alpha \in Z$ such that $\alpha _{z_\alpha }=\alpha $ .

Recalling the hypothesis of Theorem 5.1, we now let B be a club in $\kappa $ such that for every $\beta \in B$ , there exists a $\gamma \in A$ above $\beta $ such that

(V) $$ \begin{align} \forall\xi<\beta\forall i<\theta\,[\sup\{ \alpha\in A\cap\beta\mathrel{|} c(\alpha,\gamma)=\xi\ \&\ d(\alpha,\gamma)>i\}=\alpha]. \end{align} $$

Recalling $(p)_2$ and the surjection $\vec \pi $ of Notation 5.11, the following is yet another club in $\kappa $ :

$$ \begin{align*}C=\{\beta<\kappa\mathrel{|} G_\beta=\beta\ \&\ \vec \pi[\beta] = \beta\times\beta\times\beta\times\beta \times \{-1,1\}\}.\end{align*} $$

Now, let h be an arbitrary element of G, and we shall show that h is in $Z^{10120}$ . Pick a large enough $\beta \in B\cap C$ such that $h\in G_\beta $ , and then pick $\gamma \in A$ above $\beta $ satisfying (V). As $i_{z_\gamma }=j$ , we consider the unique $t \in T^{\gamma }_{<j+1, \beta }$ such that $t\mathrel {E^{\gamma }_{<j+1, \beta }} z_\gamma $ . By the choice of t, we may pick

(VI) $$ \begin{align} y_{0}, y_{1} \in G_{D^\gamma_{<j +1}\cap\beta} \end{align} $$

and ${\varepsilon } \in \{-1,1\}$ such that

$$ \begin{align*}z_\gamma = y_{0}\cdot t^{{\varepsilon}}\cdot y_{1}.\end{align*} $$

It follows that $\max \{i^{\gamma }_{y_{0}}, i^{\gamma }_{y_{1}}\} \leq j$ , and as $t \in T^{\gamma }_{<j+1, \beta } \subseteq G_{D^\gamma _{<j +1} \cup \{\gamma \}}$ , Lemma 5.9(2) implies that $i_t\le j$ as well.

As $\gamma $ was chosen to satisfy (V), we may fix $\bar \alpha \in A\cap \beta $ with $d(\bar \alpha ,\gamma )>j$ . Set $z=z_{\bar \alpha }$ and note that, by Lemma 5.9(3),

(VII) $$ \begin{align} \max \{i_{t}, i^{\gamma}_{y_{0}}, i^{\gamma}_{y_{1}}\} \le j<d(\bar\alpha,\gamma)\le i^\gamma_z. \end{align} $$

As $\alpha _z=\bar \alpha <\beta $ , we may find a large enough $\zeta < \beta $ such that $y_0,y_1,z \in G_{\zeta +1}$ . Altogether, $y_0,y_1,z \in G_{D^\gamma _{\le i^\gamma _z}\cap (\zeta +1)}$ .

As $\beta \in C$ and $z\in G_\beta $ , it follows from (VI) that we may find a $\xi < \beta $ such that

$$ \begin{align*}(\pi_0(\xi),\pi_1(\xi), \pi_2(\xi), \pi_3(\xi), \pi_4(\xi)) = (h,y_0, y_1, z, {\varepsilon}).\end{align*} $$

Utilizing (V) once more, we now pick $\alpha \in A \cap \beta $ above $\max \{\alpha _h,\zeta \}$ such that $c(\alpha ,\gamma ) = \xi $ and $d(\alpha ,\gamma )> \max \{i^\gamma _h,i^\gamma _z\}$ . Consider $i=d(\alpha ,\gamma )$ , and note that by (VII),

$$ \begin{align*}\max \{i_{t}, i^{\gamma}_{y_{0}}, i^{\gamma}_{y_{1}},i_{z_\alpha},i^\gamma_h,i^\gamma_z\}<d(\alpha,\gamma)=i,\end{align*} $$

so that

(VIII) $$ \begin{align} y_0,y_1,h,z \in G_{D^\gamma_{< i} }\cap G_\alpha. \end{align} $$

Next, consider the group elements $a = z_\alpha $ , $b = z_\gamma \cdot z$ , and $b' = b\cdot b$ , and the pair $\sigma _*=(a,t)$ .

Claim 5.20.1. $\sigma _*$ is in $\Sigma ^{++}$ of Definition 5.13.

Proof. From $d(\alpha ,\gamma )=i$ , we get that $D^\gamma _{<i } \cap (\alpha +1)=D^\gamma _{<i}\cap \alpha .$ By Lemma 4.3, $D^\alpha _{\le i_{z_\alpha }} \subseteq D^\alpha _{\le d(\alpha ,\gamma )} =D^\gamma _{\le i}\cap \alpha $ , and hence, $z_\alpha \in G_{D^\gamma _{\le i}}$ . So, if $z_\alpha $ were to be in $G_{D^\gamma _{< i}}$ , then since $\alpha _{z_\alpha }=\alpha $ , Lemma 5.9(4) would imply that

$$ \begin{align*}z_\alpha \in G_{D^\gamma_{<i }} \cap G_{\alpha+1} = G_{D^\gamma_{<i } \cap (\alpha+1)}=G_{D^\gamma_{<i}\cap\alpha}\subseteq G_\alpha,\end{align*} $$

contradicting the fact that $\alpha _{z_\alpha }=\alpha $ . Altogether, $z_\alpha \in G_{D^\gamma _{\le i}}\setminus G_{D^\gamma _{<i}}$ .

Next, since $t \in T^{\gamma }_{<j+1, \beta }$ and $\alpha <\beta $ , Lemma 5.12(3) implies that $t \in T^{\gamma }_{<j+1, \alpha }$ . In addition, since $i=d(\alpha ,\gamma )>i^\gamma _z>j$ , Lemma 5.12(2) implies that $t \in T^{\gamma }_{<i, \alpha }$ . Also, $i=d(\alpha ,\gamma )$ amounts to saying that $\alpha _{z_\alpha }=\alpha \in D^\gamma _{\le i}\setminus D^\gamma _{<i}$ , so we have established that $\sigma _* \in \Sigma ^{++}$ .

Looking at Definition 5.14, we arrive at the following table of evaluations:

Table 1 Evaluations.

It thus follows from (VIII) that $\pi _l(c(\alpha _a,\gamma )) \in G_\gamma $ for every $l<4$ , so that $\sigma _*$ is moreover in $\Sigma ^+$ , as per Definition 5.13. Looking at Conditions (1)–(3) of Definition 5.14, we see that $\sigma _*$ is a member of $\Sigma $ , as well: conditions (1) and (3) follow from (VIII), and condition (2) follows from (VII) and the fact that $i^\gamma _z<i$ .

Claim 5.20.2. holds in $G_{D^\gamma _{\le i} \cup \{\gamma \}}$ .

Proof. Recall that the group $G_{D^\gamma _{\le i} \cup \{\gamma \}}$ was obtained as the output group $M^*$ of Lemma 3.4, when invoked with $(H,K,L,S)$ of Definition 5.16. Specifically, $H = G_{D^\gamma _{< i}}$ , $K = G_{D^\gamma _{\le i} }$ , $L = G_{D^\gamma _{< i}\cup \{\gamma \}}$ and $S = \{(h_\sigma ,a_\sigma ,b_\sigma ,b_\sigma ') \mathrel {|} \sigma \in \Sigma \}$ of Definition 5.14. But $M^*$ is $M/N$ , where M is the free amalgam $K \ast _H L$ , and N is the least normal subgroup containing $\{h_\sigma ^{-1} \varrho (b_\sigma \cdot a_\sigma ,b_\sigma '\cdot a_\sigma )\mathrel {|} \sigma \in \Sigma \}$ ; hence, for each $\sigma \in \Sigma $ , we have $h_\sigma ^{-1} \varrho (b_\sigma \cdot a_\sigma ,b_\sigma '\cdot a_\sigma ) \in N$ , and clearly,

By Table 1, $b =b_{\sigma _*}$ , $b' = b_{\sigma _*}'$ , $a = a_{\sigma _*}$ , and $h = h_{\sigma _*}$ ; hence, .

Recall that for all $x,y\in G$ , $\varrho (x,y)$ is a word of length $3320$ over the alphabet $\{x,y\}$ , so since $\varrho (ba,b'a) = h$ , the fact that $z_\alpha $ , $z_\gamma $ and z all come from the initial set Z implies that

$$ \begin{align*}\varrho(z_\gamma\cdot z\cdot z_\alpha~,~z_\gamma\cdot z\cdot z_\gamma\cdot z\cdot z_\alpha) \in Z^{9720 + 400}.\end{align*} $$

Thus, we have verified that h is in $Z^{10120}$ .

Lemma 5.21.

  1. (1) G admits no $T_1$ topology other than the discrete topology;

  2. (2) G is not well-behaved in the sense of [Reference Feldman and Rinot15, p. 624];Footnote 6

  3. (3) is a nonalgebraic unconditionally closed set (i.e., closed in each Hausdorff group topology).

Proof. (1) This is a standard consequence of the malnormality of the $G_\gamma $ ’s ( $\gamma < \kappa $ ). Suppose that $\tau $ is some $T_1$ topology on G. Fix $g \in G$ distinct from . Then $U = G \setminus \{g\}$ is $\tau $ -open, so there is a $\tau $ -open neighborhood V of for which $V^n \subseteq U$ , where n is the integer for which G is n-Shelah. Note that if $|V| = \kappa $ , then $V^n = G$ , which is a contradiction, so it must be the case that $|V| < \kappa $ . But then $V \subseteq G_\gamma $ for some large enough $\gamma < \kappa $ . Now $G_\gamma \mathrel {\leq _{\mathrm {m}}} G_{\gamma +1}$ by Corollary 5.7, so for any choice of $h\in G_{\gamma +1}\setminus G_\gamma $ , it is the case that is a $\tau $ -open neighborhood of , and hence, $\tau $ is discrete.

(2) Suppose not. This means that there exists a map $\varphi :G\rightarrow [G]^{<\omega }$ such that the following two hold:

  1. (a) $\varphi $ is countable-to-one;

  2. (b) for all $x\neq y$ in G, $\varphi (x)\mathrel {\triangle }\varphi (y)\subseteq \varphi (x\cdot y)\subseteq \varphi (x)\cup \varphi (y)$ .

By Clause (a) and the $\Delta $ -system lemma, we may fix an $X\subseteq G$ of size $\kappa $ , some $r\in [G]^{<\omega }$ and some $k<\omega $ such that $\langle \varphi (x)\setminus r\mathrel {|} x\in X\rangle $ is a sequence of pairwise disjoint sets, each of size k. It then follows from Clause (b) that $|\varphi (x_1\cdots x_l)|\ge k\cdot l$ for every injective finite sequence $\langle x_1,\ldots ,x_l\rangle $ of elements of X. In particular, we may fix a $g\in G$ with $|\varphi (g)|>|r|+kn$ , where n is the integer for which G is n-Shelah. Since $X^n=G$ , we may fix a (possibly non-injective) sequence $\langle x_1,\ldots ,x_n\rangle $ of elements of X such that $x_1\cdots x_n=g$ . However, Clause (b) implies that $|\varphi (x_1\cdots x_n)|\le |r|+kn$ . This is a contradiction.

(3) We need to show that for no system $\{ w_i\mathrel {|} i \in I\}$ of words over $G \cup \{x\}$ (where x is an abstract variable outside G) do we have

where the value of $f_{w_i}(g) \in G$ is given by substituting each occurrence of the symbol x in $w_i \in {}^{<\omega }(G \cup \{x,x^{-1}\})$ with g, and calculating the value in G. It is easy to see that it suffices to prove that for no such word w does the following equation holds true:

(IX)

Suppose that w satisfies (IX), and fix a finite subset $B\subseteq G$ with $w \in {}^{<\omega }(B \cup \{x,x^{-1}\})$ . As $|B|<\theta $ , we may find $\gamma \in [1,\kappa )$ and $i\in [1,\theta )$ such that

$$ \begin{align*}B \subseteq G_{D^\gamma_{\leq i} \cup \{\gamma\}},\end{align*} $$

so for each $g \in G_{D^\gamma _{\leq i} \cup \{\gamma \}}$ that is not the identity .

We are going to prove (provided that $\Sigma $ from Definition 5.14 in the construction of $G_{D^\gamma _{\leq i} \cup \{\gamma \}}$ is not empty) that the group $G_{D^\gamma _{\leq i} \cup \{\gamma \}}$ is topologizable (with a non-discrete $T_1$ topology), which will imply that is closed (with respect to this nontrivial topology), contradicting that the topology was non-discrete.

To this end, it is enough to argue that there exists a sequence $\langle N^*_k \mathrel {|} k \in \omega \rangle $ of normal subgroups of $G_{D^\gamma _{\leq i} \cup \{\gamma \}}$ such that for each k do $N^*_{k+1} \leq N^*_k$ , and hold. Now recall how $G_{D^\gamma _{\leq i} \cup \{\gamma \}}$ was constructed in Subsection 5.2 (appealing to Lemma 3.4 there):

$$ \begin{align*}G_{D^\gamma_{\leq i} \cup \{\gamma\}} = (G_{D^\gamma_{< i} \cup \{\gamma\}} \ast_{G_{D^\gamma_{< i}}} G_{D^\gamma_{\leq i}}) / N,\end{align*} $$

where N was the normal closure of $\{ h_\sigma ^{-1} \varrho (b_\sigma a_\sigma ,b_\sigma 'a_\sigma )\mathrel {|} \sigma \in \Sigma \}$ ( $\Sigma $ is from Definition 5.14). Let $N_0$ denote this N. Observe that it is enough to define a sequence $\langle N_k \mathrel {|} k \in \omega \setminus \{0\}\rangle $ of normal subgroups in $G_{D^\gamma _{< i} \cup \{\gamma \}} \ast _{G_{D^\gamma _{< i}}} G_{D^\gamma _{\leq i}}$ that satisfies $N_{k+1} \leq N_k$ for $k\geq 1$ , $\bigcap _{k \in \omega } N_k = N_0$ and $N_0 \lneq N_k$ .

Recall that in Definition 3.2, we have the sequence $\langle n_\ell \mathrel {|} \ell <\omega \rangle $ defined via $n_{\ell } = 3320^\ell $ , and that we let $\varrho _\ell (x,y) = \varrho (x^{n_\ell },y^{n_\ell })$ (in particular, $\varrho _0 = \varrho $ ), and

$$ \begin{align*}R_k= \{ h_\sigma^{-1}\varrho_0(b_\sigma a_\sigma,b^{\prime}_\sigma a_\sigma), \varrho_\ell(b_\sigma a_\sigma,b^{\prime}_\sigma a_\sigma) \mathrel{|} \ell \geq k,~ \sigma \in \Sigma\}.\end{align*} $$

Set $N_k$ to be the normal closure of $R_k$ . Now the following will complete the proof:

Claim 5.21.1.

  1. (1) For all $\sigma \in \Sigma $ and $k>0$ ,

    $$ \begin{align*}G_{D^\gamma_{< i} \cup \{\gamma\}} \ast_{G_{D^\gamma_{< i}}} G_{D^\gamma_{\leq i}} \models\varrho_k(b_\sigma a_\sigma,b_\sigma'a_\sigma) \in N_k \setminus N_0,\end{align*} $$
  2. (2) $R_1$ satisfies $C'(\frac {1}{10})$ ; moreover, if a group element $g \in G_{D^\gamma _{< i} \cup \{\gamma \}} \ast _{G_{D^\gamma _{< i}}} G_{D^\gamma _{\leq i}}$ has a canonical representation of length $<\frac {7}{10}\cdot (n_{k} \cdot 6640)-1$ for some $k\geq 1$ , and $g \notin N_0$ , then $g \notin N_k$ .

Proof. Let us start with verifying the second clause. $R_1$ satisfies $C'(\frac {1}{10})$ just by the moreover part of (A) from Lemma 3.4. Suppose $k \in \omega $ , $g \in G_{D^\gamma _{< i} \cup \{\gamma \}} \ast _{G_{D^\gamma _{< i}}} G_{D^\gamma _{\leq i}}$ is such that $g \notin N_0$ , and g has a canonical representation of length

(X) $$ \begin{align} \ell <\frac{7}{10}\cdot (n_{k} \cdot 6640) -1. \end{align} $$

W.l.o.g. we can assume that whenever $g' \in G_{D^\gamma _{< i} \cup \{\gamma \}} \ast _{G_{D^\gamma _{< i}}} G_{D^\gamma _{\leq i}}$ satisfies

$$ \begin{align*}g' \in \{ hgh^{-1}N_0 \mathrel{|} h \in G_{D^\gamma_{< i} \cup \{\gamma\}} \ast_{G_{D^\gamma_{< i}}} G_{D^\gamma_{\leq i}}\},\end{align*} $$

then the length of g’s canonical representation does not exceed that of $g'$ (by possibly replacing g with a $g'$ with a shorter representation, since $g \in N_k \setminus N_0 \Rightarrow g' \in N_k \setminus N_0$ by the normality of $N_0$ , and $N_k$ ). Suppose on the contrary that $g \in N_k$ . Now Fact 2.10 implies that for a weakly cyclically reduced conjugate $g'$ of g, we have that $g'$ has a canonical representation $w = w_0 w_1 \cdots w_{j-1}$ , which, as a word contains a subword $s_0 s_1 \cdots s_{m-1}$ that is a subword of a representation $r_0r_1 \cdots r_{n-1}$ of some r in the symmetric closure of $R_k$ , and $m \geq \frac {7}{10} n$ . (W.l.o.g. we can assume that $s_i = r_i$ for $i <m$ , by possibly replacing r with a cyclical conjugate of it, as $R_k$ is closed under such operations.)

Now clearly, $m \leq j$ , and $j \leq \ell +1$ (by Definition 2.5), so it follows from $m \geq \frac {7}{10} n$ that $ \ell +1 \geq \frac {7}{10} n$ . But $n \in \{6640\cdot n_0,6640\cdot n_0+1, 6640 \cdot n_{i}, 6640\cdot n_i+1 \mathrel {|} i \geq k\}$ since the lengths of the words in $R_k$ form the set $\{6640\cdot n_0, 6640 \cdot n_{i} \mathrel {|} i \geq k\}$ , r is a weakly cyclically reduced conjugate of some $r' \in R_k$ , and this conjugation can only increase the length by at most one (by Observation 2.6 (2)). Therefore, by (X), $n = 6640\cdot n_0$ holds necessarily, and

$$ \begin{align*}r_0 r_1 \cdots r_{n-1} \in N_0.\end{align*} $$

Finally, observe that substituting

$$ \begin{align*}(r_{n-1}^{-1} \cdot r_{n-2}^{-1} \cdots r_0^{-1}) \cdot (r_0 \cdot r_1 \cdots r_{m-1}) = r_{n-1}^{-1} \cdot r_{n-2}^{-1} \cdots r_m^{-1}\end{align*} $$

instead of $r_0 \cdot r_1 \cdots r_{m-1}$ in w yields an element in

$$ \begin{align*}\{ hgh^{-1}N_0 \mathrel{|} h \in G_{D^\gamma_{< i} \cup \{\gamma\}} \ast_{G_{D^\gamma_{< i}}} G_{D^\gamma_{\leq i}}\}\end{align*} $$

with a shorter representation (than that of g), a contradiction.

The first clause is immediate noting that the second clause implies $\varrho _k(b_\sigma a_\sigma ,b_\sigma 'a_\sigma ) \notin N_{k+1}$ .

This completes the proof.

Corollary 5.22. For every infinite regular cardinal $\lambda $ , there exists a torsion-free Shelah group of size $\lambda ^+$ .

Proof. Invoke Theorem 5.1 with the pair $(\kappa ,\theta )=(\lambda ^+,\lambda )$ , using Theorem 4.4.

Corollary 5.23. For every regular uncountable cardinal $\kappa $ , if $\square (\kappa )$ holds, then there exists a torsion-free Shelah group of size $\kappa $ .

Proof. By Theorem 5.1 together with Corollary 4.10.

Corollary 5.24. In Gödel’s constructible universe, for every regular uncountable cardinal $\kappa $ , the following are equivalent:

  • there exists a torsion-free Shelah group of size $\kappa $ ;

  • there exists a Shelah group of size $\kappa $ ;

  • $\kappa $ is not weakly compact.

Proof. By [Reference Jensen23, Theorem 6.1], in Gödel’s constructible universe, every regular uncountable $\kappa $ is either weakly compact, or $\square (\kappa )$ holds. By Corollary 5.23, it thus suffices to prove that weakly compact cardinals do not carry a Shelah group. To this end, suppose that there is an n-Shelah group of size $\kappa $ .

Claim 5.24.1. There is a system $\vec f=\langle f_{j}\mathrel {|} j<n^n \rangle $ of functions from $[\kappa ]^n$ to $n^n+1$ such that $\bigcup _{j<n^n} f_j"[X]^n = n^n+1$ for every $X\in [\kappa ]^\kappa $ .

Proof. Fix an n-Shelah group G with underlying set $\kappa $ . Let $\langle \psi _j\mathrel {|} j<n^n\rangle $ list all possible maps from n to n. For every $j<n^n$ , define $h_j: [\kappa ]^n \rightarrow \kappa $ by letting for every n-tuple $(g_0,g_1,\ldots ,g_{n-1})$ of elements of G, enumerated in $\in $ -increasing order:

$$ \begin{align*}h_j(g_0,g_1,\ldots,g_{n-1})=g_{\psi_j(0)}\cdot g_{\psi_j(1)}\cdots g_{\psi_j(n-1)}.\end{align*} $$

Evidently, for every infinite $X\subseteq \kappa $ , $\bigcup _{j<n^n} h_j"[X]^n$ is nothing but the set of all group words of length n in the elements of X. So, since G is an n-Shelah group with underlying set $\kappa $ , for every $X\subseteq \kappa $ of full size, $\bigcup _{j<n^n} h_j"[X]^n=\kappa $ .

For every $j<n^n$ , let $f_j:[\kappa ]^n\rightarrow (n^n+1)$ be the color-blind version of $h_j$ obtained via

$$ \begin{align*}f_j(u)=\min(h_j(u),n^n).\end{align*} $$

Then, $\bigcup _{j<n^n} f_j"[X]^n = n^n+1$ for every $X\in [\kappa ]^\kappa $ .

Let $\vec f$ be given by the claim. Define $c:[\kappa ]^n\rightarrow {}^{n^n}(n^n+1)$ via

$$ \begin{align*}c(u)=\langle f_j(u)\mathrel{|} j<n^n\rangle.\end{align*} $$

Since $\kappa $ is weakly compact, $\kappa \rightarrow (\kappa )^n_k$ holds for every cardinal $k<\kappa $ – in particular, for $k=(n^n+1)^{n^n}$ . So, we may find a set $X \in [\kappa ]^\kappa $ such that $c\restriction [X]^n$ is constant with value, say, $\langle m_j\mathrel {|} j<n^n\rangle $ . Pick an $m\in n^n+1$ distinct from $m_j$ for all $j<n^n$ . Then $m\notin \bigcup _{j<n^n} f_j"[X]^n$ , contradicting the choice of $\vec f$ .

Acknowledgements

The results of this paper were presented by the first author at the Toronto Set Theory Seminar in May 2023 and at the Young Set Theory Workshop in Budapest, June 2024. We thank the organizers for the opportunity to speak and the participants for their feedback. We also thank the four referees of this paper for their feedback, especially to referee Y for detailed and thoughtful reports.

Competing interest

The authors have no competing interests to declare.

Funding statement

The first author was supported by the Excellence Fellowship Program for International Postdoctoral Researchers of The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and by the National Research, Development and Innovation Office – NKFIH, grants no. 124749, 129211. The second author was partially supported by the Israel Science Foundation (grant agreement 203/22) and by the European Research Council (grant agreement ERC-2018-StG 802756).

Footnotes

1 See https://mathoverflow.net/questions/313516/ for a MathOverflow discussion initiated by Taras Banakh in October 2018. However, the second question was brought to the second author’s attention in an email exchange with Ol’ga Sipacheva back in May 2006.

2 An upper bound is $k=(n^n+1)^{n^n}$ , as shown in the proof of Corollary 5.24 below.

3 For a (finite or infinite) cardinal $\lambda $ , the Hungarian arrow notation $\lambda \rightarrow (\lambda )^n_k$ stands for the assertion that for every set X of size $\lambda $ , whenever the family $[X]^n$ of all n-sized subsets of X is partitioned into k-many cells $[X]^n=\biguplus _{i=1}^kP_i$ , then there exists a subset $Y\subseteq X$ of full size all of whose n-sized subsets belong to the same cell, i.e., $[Y]^n\subseteq P_i$ for one of the i’s. Equivalently, for every coloring $c:[X]^n\rightarrow k$ , there exists a subset $Y\subseteq X$ of full size that is c-homogeneous, i.e., $c\restriction [Y]^n$ is constant.

4 Recall Notation 4.2.

5 Recall $(p)_2$ .

6 Well-behaved is a weakening of the assertion that a group admits a basis. For instance, any infinite commutative cancellative semigroup is well-behaved (follows from [Reference Fuchs17, Theorem 23.1]).

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Figure 0

Table 1 Evaluations.