Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 March 2014
We introduce the notion of skinniness for subsets of and its variants, namely skinnier and skinniest. We show that under some cardinal arithmetical assumptions, precipitousness or 2λ-saturation of NSκλ ∣ X, where NSκλ denotes the non-stationary ideal over , implies the existence of a skinny stationary subset of X. We also show that if λ is a singular cardinal, then there is no skinnier stationary subset of . Furthermore, if λ is a strong limit singular cardinal, there is no skinny stationary subset of . Combining these results, we show that if λ is a strong limit singular cardinal, then NSκλ ∣ X can satisfy neither precipitousness nor 2λ-saturation for every stationary X ⊆ . We also indicate that , where , is equivalent to the existence of a skinnier (or skinniest) stationary subset of under some cardinal arithmetical hypotheses.