Baumgartner's Axiom and Small Posets

Abstract

We contribute to the study of $\aleph_1$-dense sets of reals, a mainstay in set theoretic research since Baumgartner's seminal work in the 70s. In particular, we show that it is consistent with $\textsf{MA}$ that there exists an $\aleph_1$-dense set of reals $A$ so that, in any cardinal-preserving generic extension by a forcing of size $\aleph_1$, $A$ and $A^*$ do not contain uncountable subsets which are order isomorphic. This strengthens a result of Avraham and the second author and yields a different proof of a theorem of Moore and Todorcevic.