Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 March 2014
Improving on a result of Arana, we construct an effective family (φr ∣ r ϵ ℚ ∩ [0,1]) of Σn-conservative Πn sentences, increasing in strength as r decreases, with the property that ¬φp is Πn-conservative over PA + φq whenever p < q. We also construct a family of Σn sentences with properties as above except that the roles of Σn and Πn are reversed. The latter result allows to re-obtain an unpublished result of Solovay, the presence of a subset order-isomorphic to the reals in every non-trivial end-segment of every branch of the E-tree, and to generalize it to analogues of the E-tree at higher levels of the arithmetical hierarchy.