On possible non-homeomorphic substructures of the real line

We consider the problem, raised by Kunen and Tall, of whether the real continuum can have non-homeomorphic versions in different submodels of the universe of all sets. This requires large cardinals, and we obtain an exact consistency strength:

Theorem 1. The following are equiconsistent:

(i) a Jónsson cardinal;

(ii) a sufficiently elementary submodel of the universe of sets with not homeomorphic to

The reverse direction is a corollary to:

Theorem 2. is Jónsson hereditarily separable, hereditarily Lindelöf, with .

We further consider the large cardinal consequences of the existence of a topological space with a proper substructure homeomorphic to Baire space.