Some transfinite natural sums

Abstract

We study a transfinite iteration of the ordinal Hessenberg natural sum obtained by taking suprema at limit stages and show that such an iterated natural sum differs from the more usual transfinite ordinal sum only for a finite number of iteration steps. The iterated natural sum of a sequence of ordinals can be obtained as a "mixed sum" (in an order-theoretical sense) of the ordinals in the sequence, in fact, it is the largest mixed sum which satisfies a finiteness condition, relative to the ordering of the sequence. We introduce other infinite natural sums which are invariant under permutations and show that they all coincide in the countable case. Finally, in the last section we use the above infinitary natural sums in order to provide a definition of size for a well-founded tree, together with an order-theoretical characterization in the countable case. The proof of this order-theoretical characterization is mostly independent from the rest of this paper.