The amalgamation spectrum

Abstract We study when classes can have the disjoint amalgamation property for a proper initial segment of cardinals. For every natural number k, there is a class Kk, defined by a sentence in Lω1,ω that has no models of cardinality greater than ℶk + 1, but Kk has the disjoint amalgamation property on models of cardinality less than or equal to ℵk − 3 and has models of cardinality ℵk − 1. More strongly, we can have disjoint amalgamation up to ℵ∝ for ∝ < ω1, but have a bound on size of models. For every countable ordinal ∝, there is a class K∝ defined by a sentence in Lω1,ω that has no models of cardinality greater than ℶω1, but K does have the disjoint amalgamation property on models of cardinality less than or equal to ℵ∝. Finally we show that we can extend the ℵ∝ to ℶ∝ in the second theorem consistently with ZFC and while having ℵi ≪ ℶi for 0 < i < ∝. Similar results hold for arbitrary ordinals ∝ with ∣∝∣ = k and Lk + ω.