Lower bounds for the perfect set property at weakly compact cardinals
By the Cantor-Bendixson theorem, subtrees of the binary tree on $\omega$ satisfy a dichotomy - either the tree has countably many branches or there is a perfect subtree (and in particular, the tree has continuum manybranches, regardless of the size of the continuum). We generalize this to arbitrary regular cardinals $\kappa$ and ask whether every $\kappa$-tree with more than $\kappa$ branches has a perfect subset. From large cardinals, this statement isconsistent at a weakly compact cardinal $\kappa$. We show using stacking mice that the existence of a non-domestic mouse (which yields a model with a proper class of Woodin cardinals and strong cardinals) is a lower bound. Moreover, we study variants of this statement involving sealed trees, i.e. trees with the property that their set of branches cannot be changed by certain forcings, and obtain lower bounds for these as well. This is joint work with Yair Hayut.