Abraham-Rubin-Shelah Open Colorings and a Large Continuum

Abstract

We show that the Abraham-Rubin-Shelah Open Coloring Axiom is consistent with a large continuum, in particular, consistent with $2^{\aleph_0}=\aleph_3$. This answers one of the main open questions from the 1985 paper of Abraham-Rubin-Shelah. As in their paper, we need to construct names for so-called preassignments of colors in order to add the necessary homogeneous sets. However, these names are constructed over models satisfying the CH. In order to address this difficulty, we show how to construct such names with very strong symmetry conditions. This symmetry allows us to combine them in many different ways, using a new type of poset called a Partition Product, and thereby obtain a model of this axiom in which $2^{\aleph_0}=\aleph_3$.