We give a survey of results on the relative strengths of different fragments of Martin's Axiom, as well as a list of the main remaining open questions.

We study Structural Reflection beyond Vopěnka's Principle, at the level of almost-huge cardinals and higher, up to rank-into-rank embeddings. We identify and classify new large cardinal notions in that region that correspond to some form of what we call Exact Structural Reflection (ESR). Namely, given cardinals κ<λ and a class C of structures of the same type, the corresponding instance of ESR asserts that for every structure A in C of rank λ, there is a structure B in C of rank κ and an elementary embedding of B into A. Inspired by the statement of Chang's Conjecture, we also introduce and study sequential forms of ESR, which, in the case of sequences of length ω, turn out to be very strong. Indeed, when restricted to Π1-definable classes of structures they follow from the existence of I1-embeddings, while for more complicated classes of structures, e.g., Σ2, they are not known to be consistent. Thus, these principles unveil a new class of large cardinals that go beyond I1-embeddings, yet they may not fall into Kunen's Inconsistency.

Abstract We prove two general results about the preservation of extendible and $C^{(n)}$ -extendible cardinals under a wide class of forcing iterations (Theorems 5.4 and 7.5). As applications we give new proofs of the preservation of Vopěnka’s Principle and $C^{(n)}$ -extendible cardinals under Jensen’s iteration for forcing the GCH [17], previously obtained in [8, 27], respectively. We prove that $C^{(n)}$ -extendible cardinals are preserved by forcing with standard Easton-support iterations for any possible $\Delta _2$ -definable behaviour of the power-set function on regular cardinals. We show that one can force proper class-many disagreements between the universe and HOD with respect to the calculation of successors of regular cardinals, while preserving $C^{(n)}$ -extendible cardinals. We also show, assuming the GCH, that the class forcing iteration of Cummings–Foreman–Magidor for forcing $\diamondsuit _{\kappa ^+}^+$ at every $\kappa $ [10] preserves $C^{(n)}$ -extendible cardinals. We give an optimal result on the consistency of weak square principles and $C^{(n)}$ -extendible cardinals. In the last section prove another preservation result for $C^{(n)}$ -extendible cardinals under very general (not necessarily definable or weakly homogeneous) class forcing iterations. As applications we prove the consistency of $C^{(n)}$ -extendible cardinals with $\mathrm {{V}}=\mathrm {{HOD}}$ , and also with $\mathrm {GA}$ (the Ground Axiom) plus $\mathrm {V}\neq \mathrm {HOD}$ , the latter being a strengthening of a result from [14].

Abstract We give a level-by-level analysis of the Weak Vopěnka Principle for definable classes of relational structures ( $\mathrm {WVP}$ ), in accordance with the complexity of their definition, and we determine the large-cardinal strength of each level. Thus, in particular, we show that $\mathrm {WVP}$ for $\Sigma _2$ -definable classes is equivalent to the existence of a strong cardinal. The main theorem (Theorem 5.11) shows, more generally, that $\mathrm {WVP}$ for $\Sigma _n$ -definable classes is equivalent to the existence of a $\Sigma _n$ -strong cardinal (Definition 5.1). Hence, $\mathrm {WVP}$ is equivalent to the existence of a $\Sigma _n$ -strong cardinal for all $n<\omega $ .

Abstract We study some large cardinals in terms of reflection, establishing new connections between the model-theoretic and the set-theoretic approaches.

Abstract An uncountable cardinal κ is called ${\omega _1}$ -strongly compact if every κ-complete ultrafilter on any set I can be extended to an ${\omega _1}$ -complete ultrafilter on I. We show that the first ${\omega _1}$ -strongly compact cardinal, ${\kappa _0}$ , cannot be a successor cardinal, and that its cofinality is at least the first measurable cardinal. We prove that the Singular Cardinal Hypothesis holds above ${\kappa _0}$ . We show that the product of Lindelöf spaces is κ-Lindelöf if and only if $\kappa \ge {\kappa _0}$ . Finally, we characterize ${\kappa _0}$ in terms of second order reflection for relational structures and we give some applications. For instance, we show that every first-countable nonmetrizable space has a nonmetrizable subspace of size less than ${\kappa _0}$ .

Abstract We give a sharper version of a theorem of Rosický, Trnková and Adámek [13], and a new proof of a theorem of Rosický [12], both about colimits in categories of structures. Unlike the original proofs, which use category-theoretic methods, we use set-theoretic arguments involving elementary embeddings given by large cardinals such as α-strongly compact and C(n)-extendible cardinals.

Abstract. We study the preservation under projective ccc forcing extensions of the property of L(ℝ) being a Solovay model. We prove that this property is preserved by every strongly- absolutely-ccc forcing extension, and that this is essentially the optimal preservation result, i.e., it does not hold for absolutely-ccc forcing notions. We extend these results to the higher projective classes of ccc posets, and to the class of all projective ccc posets, using definably-Mahlo cardinals. As a consequence we obtain an exact equiconsistency result for generic absoluteness under projective absolutely-ccc forcing notions.

Abstract Martin's axiom is equivalent to the statement that the universe is absolute under ccc forcing extensions for Σ1 sentences with a subset of κ, , as a parameter.

Some of the most striking results in modern set theory have emerged from the study of simply-definable sets of real numbers. Indeed, simple questions like: what are the posible cardinalities?, are they measurable?, do they have the property of Baire?, etc., cannot be answered in ZFC. When one restricts the attention to the analytic sets, i.e., the continuous images of Borel sets, then ZFC does provide an answer to these questions. But this is no longer true for the projective sets, i.e., all the sets of reals that can be obtained from the Borel sets by taking continuous images and complements. In this paper we shall concentrate on particular projective classes, the , and using forcing constructions we will produce models of ZFC where, for some n, all , sets have some specified property. For the definition and basic facts about the projective classes , and , as well as the Kleene (or lightface) classes , and , we refer the reader to Moschovakis [19]. The first part of the paper is about measure and category. Early in this century, Luzin [16] and Luzin-Sierpiński [17] showed that all analytic (i.e., ) sets of reals are Lebesgue measurable and have the property of Baire.