One partially ordered set, Q, is a Tukey quotient of another, P, if there is a map (a Tukey quotient) $\phi :P \to Q$ carrying cofinal sets of P to cofinal sets of Q. Two partial orders which are mutual Tukey quotients of each other are said to be Tukey equivalent. Let ${\cal D}_{\rm{}} $ be the partially ordered set of Tukey equivalence classes of directed sets of size $ \le {\rm{}}$. It is shown that ${\cal D}_{\rm{}} $ contains an antichain of size $2^{\rm{}} $, and so has size $2^{\rm{}} $. The elements of the antichain are of the form ${\cal K}\left( M \right)$, the set of compact subsets of a separable metrizable space M, ordered by inclusion. The order structure of such ${\cal K}\left( M \right)$’s under Tukey quotients is investigated. Relative Tukey quotients are introduced. Applications are given to function spaces and to the complexity of weakly countably determined Banach spaces and Gul’ko compacta.

Let Q denote the rationals, P the irrationals, C the Cantor set and L the space C − {p} (where p ∈ C). Let f : X → Y be a perfect continuous surjection. We show: (1) If X ∈ {Q, P, Q × P}, or if f is irreducible and X ∈ {C, L}, then Y is homeomorphic to X if Y is zero-dimensional. (2) If X ∈ {P, C, L} and f is irreducible, then there is a dense subset S of Y such that f|f ← [S] is a homeomorphism onto S. However, if Z is any σ-compact nowhere locally compact metric space then there is a perfect irreducible continuous surjection from Q × C onto Z such that each fibre of the map is homeomorphic to C.