The consistency strength of hyperstationarity

Abstract

We introduce the large-cardinal notions of [Formula: see text]-greatly-Mahlo and [Formula: see text]-reflection cardinals and prove (1) in the constructible universe, [Formula: see text], the first [Formula: see text]-reflection cardinal, for [Formula: see text] a successor ordinal, is strictly between the first [Formula: see text]-greatly-Mahlo and the first [Formula: see text]-indescribable cardinals, (2) assuming the existence of a [Formula: see text]-reflection cardinal [Formula: see text] in [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text] a successor ordinal, there exists a forcing notion in [Formula: see text] that preserves cardinals and forces that [Formula: see text] is [Formula: see text]-stationary, which implies that the consistency strength of the existence of a [Formula: see text]-stationary cardinal is strictly below a [Formula: see text]-indescribable cardinal. These results generalize to all successor ordinals [Formula: see text] the original same result of Mekler–Shelah [A. Mekler and S. Shelah, The consistency strength of every stationary set reflects, Israel J. Math. 67(3) (1989) 353–365] about a [Formula: see text]-stationary cardinal, i.e. a cardinal that reflects all its stationary sets.