0†

{{No footnotes|date=June 2014}}

In set theory, 0^† (zero dagger) is a particular subset of the natural numbers, first defined by Robert M. Solovay in unpublished work in the 1960s. The definition is a bit awkward, because there might be no set of natural numbers satisfying the conditions. Specifically, if ZFC is consistent, then ZFC + "0^† does not exist" is consistent. ZFC + "0^† exists" is not known to be inconsistent (and most set theorists believe that it is consistent). In other words, it is believed to be independent (see large cardinal for a discussion). It is usually formulated as follows:

:0^† exists if and only if there exists a non-trivial elementary embedding  j : L[U] → L[U] for the relativized Gödel constructible universe {{tmath|L[U]}}, where U is an ultrafilter witnessing that some cardinal κ is measurable.

If 0^† exists, then a careful analysis of the embeddings of {{tmath|L[U]}} into itself reveals that there is a closed unbounded subset of κ, and a closed unbounded proper class of ordinals greater than κ, which together are indiscernible for the structure $(L,\backslash in,U)$, and 0^† is defined to be the set of Gödel numbers of the true formulas about the indiscernibles in {{tmath|L[U]}}.

Solovay showed that the existence of 0^† follows from the existence of two measurable cardinals. It is traditionally considered a large cardinal axiom, although it is not a large cardinal, nor indeed a cardinal at all.