I shall describe the current state of knowledge concerning the question of whether there can be an embedding of the set-theoretic universe into the constructible universe. The main question is: can there be an embedding $j:Vto L$ of the set-theoretic universe $V$ into the constructible universe $L$, when $Vneq L$? The notion of embedding here is merely that $xin y$ if and only if $j(x)in j(y)$, and such a map need not be elementary nor even $Delta_0$-elementary. It is not difficult to see that there can generally be no $Delta_0$-elementary embedding $j:Vto L$, when $Vneq L$.  Nevertheless, the question arises very naturally in the context of my previous work on the embeddability phenomenon, which shows that every countable model $M$ does admit an embedding $j:Mto L^M$ into its constructible universe. More generally, any two countable models of set theory are comparable; one of them embeds into the other. Indeed, one model $langle M,in^Mrangle$ embeds into another $langle N,in^Nrangle$ just in case the ordinals of the first $text{Ord}^M$ order-embed into the ordinals of the second $text{Ord}^N$.  In these theorems, the embeddings $j:Mto L^M$ are defined completely externally to $M$, and so it was natural to wonder to what extent such an embedding might be accessible inside $M$. Currently, the question remains open, but we have some partial progress, settling it in a number of cases.

This is joint work of myself, W. Hugh Woodin, Menachem Magidor, with contributions also by David Aspero, Ralf Schindler and Yair Hayut.  See more information at the links below:

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Given an uncountable regular cardinal $\kappa$, the generalized Baire space of $\kappa$ is set ${}^\kappa\kappa$ of all functions from $\kappa$ to $\kappa$ equipped with the topology whose basic open sets consist of all extensions of partial functions of cardinality less than $\kappa$.
A subset of this space is $\mathbf{\Sigma}^1_1$ (i.e. a projection of a closed subset of ${}^\kappa\kappa\times{}^\kappa\kappa$) if and only it is definable over $\mathrm{H}(\kappa^+)$ by a $\Sigma_1$-formula with parameters. This shows that the class of $\mathbf{\Sigma}^1_1$-subsets contains a great variety of set-theoretically interesting objects. Moreover, it is known that many basic and interesting questions about sets in this class are not decided by the axioms of $\mathrm{ZFC}$ plus large cardinal axioms.

In my talk, I want to present examples of extensions of $\mathrm{ZFC}$ that settle many of these questions by providing a nice structure theory for the class of $\mathbf{\Sigma}^1_1$-subsets of ${}^\kappa\kappa$. These forcing axioms appear in the work of Fuchs, Leibman, Stavi and Väänänen. They are variations of the maximality principle introduced by Stavi and Väänänen and later rediscovered by Hamkins.

It is open whether $\Pi^1_1$ determinacy implies the existence of $0^{\#}$ in 3rd order arithmetic, call it $Z_3$. We compute the large cardinal strength of $Z_3$ plus “there is a real $x$ such that every $x$-admissible is an $L$-cardinal.” This is joint work with Yong Cheng.