The Polarised Partition Relation for Order Types

Abstract

We analyse partitions of products with two ordered factors in two classes where both factors are countable or well-ordered and at least one of them is countable. This relates the partition properties of these products to cardinal characteristics of the continuum. We build on work by Erd\H{o}s, Garti, Jones, Orr, Rado, Shelah and Szemer\'edi. In particular, we show that a theorem of Jones extends from the natural numbers to the rational ones but consistently extends only to three further equimorphism classes of countable orderings. This is made possible by applying a thirteen-year old theorem of Orr about embedding a given order into a sum of finite orders indexed over the given order.