Corona Rigidity

Abstract: We give a unified overview of the study of the effects of additional set theoretic axioms on quotient structures. Our focus is on rigidity, measured in terms of existence (or rather non-existence) of suitably non-trivial automorphisms of the quotients in question. A textbook example for the study of this topic is the Boolean algebra $\mathcal{P}(\mathbb{N})/\text{Fin}$, whose behavior is the template around which this survey revolves: Forcing axioms imply that all of its automorphisms are trivial, in the sense that they are induced by almost permutations of $\mathbb{N}$, while under the Continuum Hypothesis this rigidity fails and $\mathcal{P}(\mathbb{N})/\text{Fin}$ admits uncountably many non-trivial automorphisms. We consider far-reaching generalisations of this phenomenon and present a wide variety of situations where analogous patterns persist, focusing mainly (but not exclusively) on the categories of Boolean algebras, \v{C}ech-Stone remainders, and $\mathrm{C}^\ast$-algebras. We survey the state of the art and the future prospects of this field, discussing the major open problems and outlining the main ideas of the proofs whenever possible.