Paper 2, Section II, I
Part II, 2014
Write down the recursive definitions of ordinal addition, multiplication and exponentiation. Show that, for any nonzero ordinal , there exist unique ordinals and such that and .
Hence or otherwise show that (that is, the set of ordinals less than ) is closed under addition if and only if for some . Show also that an infinite ordinal is closed under multiplication if and only if for some .
[You may assume the standard laws of ordinal arithmetic, and the fact that for all .]