Regular Ultrapowers at Regular Cardinals

Abstract

In earlier work of the second and third author the equivalence of a finite square principle square^fin_{lambda,D} with various model theoretic properties of structures of size lambda and regular ultrafilters was established. In this paper we investigate the principle square^fin_{lambda,D}, and thereby the above model theoretic properties, at a regular cardinal. By Chang's Two-Cardinal Theorem, square^fin_{lambda,D} holds at regular cardinals for all regular filters D if we assume GCH. In this paper we prove in ZFC that for certain regular filters that we call "doubly^+ regular", square^fin_{lambda,D} holds at regular cardinals, with no assumption about GCH. Thus we get new positive answers in ZFC to Open Problems 18 and 19 in the book "Model Theory" by Chang and Keisler.