Yet another ideal version of the bounding number

TL;DR

This paper investigates certain bounding numbers related to ideals on natural numbers, showing their values are often equal to the classical bounding number under various ideal conditions, and provides examples with different cardinal characteristics.

Contribution

It establishes the equality of specific bounding numbers with the classical bounding number for broad classes of ideals and constructs examples with varied cardinal characteristics.

Findings

For ideals with the Baire property, the bounding number equals the classical bounding number.

For coanalytic weak P-ideals, the bounding number is between  and .

Examples of Borel ideals with bounding numbers equal to  and  are provided.

Abstract

Let $\mathcal{I}$ be an ideal on $\omega$. For $f,g\in\omega^\omega$ we write $f \leq_{\mathcal{I}} g$ if $f(n) \leq g(n)$ for all $n\in\omega\setminus A$ with some $A\in\mathcal{I}$. Moreover, we denote $\mathcal{D}_{\mathcal{I}}=\{f\in\omega^\omega: f^{-1}[\{n\}]\in\mathcal{I} \text{ for every $n\in \omega$}\}$ (in particular, $\mathcal{D}_{Fin}$ denotes the family of all finite-to-one functions). We examine cardinal numbers $\mathfrak{b}(\geq_{\mathcal{I}}\cap (\mathcal{D}_{\mathcal{I}} \times \mathcal{D}_{\mathcal{I}}))$ and $\mathfrak{b}(\geq_{\mathcal{I}}\cap (\mathcal{D}_{Fin}\times \mathcal{D}_{Fin}))$ describing the smallest sizes of unbounded from below with respect to the order $\leq_{\mathcal{I}}$ sets in $\mathcal{D}_{Fin}$ and $\mathcal{D}_{\mathcal{I}}$, respectively. For a maximal ideal $\mathcal{I}$, these cardinals were investigated by M. Canjar in connection with coinitial and cofinal subsets of the ultrapowers. We show that $\mathfrak{b}(\geq_{\mathcal{I}}\cap (\mathcal{D}_{Fin} \times \mathcal{D}_{Fin})) =\mathfrak{b}$ for all ideals $\mathcal{I}$ with the Baire property and that $\aleph_1 \leq \mathfrak{b}(\geq_{\mathcal{I}}\cap (\mathcal{D}_{\mathcal{I}} \times \mathcal{D}_{\mathcal{I}})) \leq\mathfrak{b}$ for all coanalytic weak P-ideals (this class contains all $\Pi^0_4$ ideals). What is more, we give examples of Borel (even $\Sigma^0_2$) ideals $\mathcal{I}$ with $\mathfrak{b}(\geq_{\mathcal{I}}\cap (\mathcal{D}_{\mathcal{I}} \times \mathcal{D}_{\mathcal{I}}))=\mathfrak{b}$ as well as with $\mathfrak{b}(\geq_{\mathcal{I}}\cap (\mathcal{D}_{\mathcal{I}} \times \mathcal{D}_{\mathcal{I}})) =\aleph_1$.