Paper detail

Sweet & Sour and other flavours of ccc forcing notions

The present paper has three themes. First, we continue the investigations started in Judah, Roslanowski and Shelah \math.LO/9310224 and Roslanowski and Shelah math.LO/9807172, math.LO/9703222, and we investigate the method of norms on possibilities in the context of ccc forcing notions, getting a number of constructions of nicely definable ccc forcings. The second theme of the paper is a part of the general program ``how special are random and Cohen forcing notions (or: the respective ideals)''. Shelah math.LO/9303208 shows that the two forcing notions may occupy special positions in the realm of nicely definable forcing notions. In this realm we may classify forcing notions using the methods of Shelah [Sh:630] (math.LO/9712283), [Sh:669] and, for example, declare that very Souslin (or generally omega-nw-nep) ccc forcing notions are really nice. Both the Cohen forcing notion and the random forcing notion and their FS iterations (and nice subforcings) are all ccc omega-nw-nep, and Problem 4.24 of math.LO/9906113 asked if we have more examples. It occurs that our method relatively easily results in very Souslin ccc forcing notions. The third theme is Sweet & Sour, and it is related to one of the most striking differences between the random and the Cohen forcing notions that appears when we consider the respective regularity properties of projective sets: the Lebesgue measurability of Sigma^1_3 sets implies aleph_1 is inaccessible in L, while one can construct (in ZFC) a forcing notion P which forces ``projective subsets of R have the Baire property'' (see Shelah [Sh:176]).