CARDINAL INVARIANTS AND EVENTUALLY DIFFERENT FUNCTIONS

Abstract

In this paper we study several kinds of maximal almost disjoint families. In the main result of this paper we show that for successor cardinals $\kappa$, there is an unexpected connection between invariants $\frac{a}_{e}(\kappa), \frac{b} (\kappa)$ and a certain cardinal invariant $\frac{m}_{d}(\kappa^{+})$ on $\kappa^{+}$. As a corollary we get for example the following result. For a successor cardinal $\kappa$, even assuming that $\kappa^{<\kappa}=\kappa$ and $2^{\kappa}=\kappa^{+}$, the following is not provable in Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory. There is a $\kappa^{+}$-cc poset which does not collapse $\kappa$ and which forces $\frac{a} (\kappa)=\kappa^{+}<\frac{a}_{e}(\kappa)=\kappa^{++}=2^{\kappa}$. We also apply the ideas from the proofs of these results to study $\frac{a} =\frac{a} (\omega)$ and $\hbox{\rm non}(\cal{M})$.