On inverse Goodstein sequences
摘要
In the late 1980s, Abrusci, Girard and van de Wiele defined a variant of Goodstein sequences: the so-called inverse Goodstein sequence. In their work, they show that it terminates precisely at the Bachmann-Howard ordinal. This reveals that a proof of this fact requires substantial consistency strength. Moreover, the authors could show that sequences of this kind terminate even if the hereditary base change at the heart of their construction is replaced by a generalization using arbitrary dilators. It has been a conjecture by Andreas Weiermann that this more general result has a connection to Bachmann-Howard fixed points and is, therefore, equivalent to one of the most famous strong set existence principles from reverse mathematics: