The grounded Martin's axiom

Abstract

We introduce a variant of Martin's axiom, called the grounded Martin's axiom, which asserts that the universe is a ccc forcing extension in which Martin's axiom holds for posets in the ground model. This principle already implies several of the combinatorial consequences of Martin's axiom. The new axiom is shown to be consistent with the failure of Martin's axiom and a singular continuum. We prove that the grounded Martin's axiom is preserved in a strong way when adding a Cohen real and that adding a random real to a model of Martin's axiom preserves the grounded version (even though it destroys Martin's axiom itself). We also consider the analogous variant of the proper forcing axiom.