Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised Jul 21, 2026

Iterable cardinal

In mathematics, an iterable cardinal is a type of large cardinal introduced by Gitman, and Sharpe and Welch, and further studied by Gitman and Welch. Sharpe and Welch defined a cardinal κ to be iterable if every subset of κ is contained in a weak κ-model M for which there exists an M-ultrafilter on κ which allows for wellfounded iterations by ultrapowers of arbitrary length. Gitman gave a finer notion, where a cardinal κ is defined to be α-iterable if ultrapower iterations only of length α are required to wellfounded.

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In mathematics, an iterable cardinal is a type of large cardinal introduced by Gitman (2011), and Sharpe and Welch (2011), and further studied by Gitman and Welch (2011). Sharpe and Welch defined a cardinal κ to be iterable if every subset of κ is contained in a weak κ-model M for which there exists an M-ultrafilter on κ which allows for wellfounded iterations by ultrapowers of arbitrary length. Gitman gave a finer notion, where a cardinal κ is defined to be α-iterable if ultrapower iterations only of length α are required to wellfounded. (By standard arguments iterability is equivalent to ω1-iterability.)

Strength relative to other large cardinals

For any ordinal α, α-Erdős cardinal is stronger than α-iterable cardinal which is stronger than β-Erdős cardinal for β < α.

1-iterable cardinal is weaker than remarkable cardinal and virtually extendible cardinal which are weaker than 2-iterable cardinal.

ω-iterable cardinal is weaker than virtually rank-into-rank cardinal which is weaker than ω+1-iterable cardinal.

If α < ω1, then α-iterable cardinal is weaker than Silver cardinal. ω1-iterable cardinal is stronger than zero sharp.

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