Abstract. We show that the reduced cofinality of the nonstationary ideal NS κ on a regular uncountable cardinal κ may be less than its cofinality, where the reduced cofinality of NS κ is the least cardinality of any family F of nonstationary subsets of κ such that every nonstationary subset of κ can be covered by less than κ many members of F . For this we investigate connections of the various cofinalities of NS κ with other cardinal characteristics of κ κ and we also give a property of forcing notions (called manageability) which is preserved in <κ-support iterations and which implies that the forcing notion preserves non-meagerness of subsets of κ κ (and does not collapse cardinals nor changes cofinalities).
IntroductionLet κ be a regular uncountable cardinal. For C ⊆ κ and γ ≤ κ, we say that γ is a limit point of C if (C ∩ γ) = γ > 0. C is closed unbounded if C is a cofinal subset of κ containing all its limit points less than κ. A set A ⊆ κ is nonstationary if A is disjoint from some closed unbounded subset C of κ. The nonstationary subsets of κ form an ideal on κ denoted by NS κ . The cofinality of this ideal, cof(NS κ ), is the least cardinality of a family F of nonstationary subsets of κ such that every nonstationary subset of κ is contained in a member of F. The reduced cofinality of NS κ , cof(NS κ ), is the least cardinality of a family F ⊆ NS κ such that every nonstationary subset of κ can be covered by less than κ many members of F. This paper addresses the question of whether cof(NS κ ) = cof(NS κ ). Note thatso under GCH we have cof(NS κ ) = cof(NS κ ). Let κ 2 be endowed with the κ-box product topology, 2 itself considered discrete. We say that a set W ⊆ κ 2 is κ-meager if there is a sequence U α : α < κ of dense open subsets of κ 2 such that W ∩ α<κ U α = ∅. The covering number for the category of the space κ 2, denoted cov(M κ,κ ), is the least cardinality of any collection X of