We study the cardinal invariants of analytic P-ideals, concentrating on the ideal Zof asymptotic density zero. Among other results we prove min{b, cov (N)} ≤ cov∗(Z) ≤ max{b, non(N)}. Introduction Analytic P-ideals and their quotients have been extensively studied in recent years. The first step to better understanding the structure of the quotient forcings P(ω)/I is to understand the structure of the ideal itself. Significant progress in understanding the way in which the structure of an ideal affects the structure of its quotient has been done by I. Farah [Fa1, Fa2, Fa3, Fa4, Fa5]. Typically (but not always) the quotients P(ω)/I, where I is an analytic P-ideal, are proper and weakly distributive. For some special ideals these quotients have been identified: P(ω)/Z is as forcing notion equivalent to P(ω)/fin ∗ B(2) [Fa5], and P(ω)/ tr(N) [HZ1] is as forcing notion equivalent to the iteration of B(ω) followed by an א0-distributive forcing (see the definitions below). A secondary motivation comes from the problem of which ideals can be destroyed by a weakly distributive forcing. Even for the class of analytic P-ideals only partial results are known (see Section 3). In this note we contribute to this line of research by investigating cardinal invariants of analytic P-ideals, comparing them to other, standard, cardinal invariants of the continuum. In the first section we introduce cardinal invariants of ideals on ω, along the lines of the cardinal invariants contained in the Cichon’s diagram. We also recall the definitions of standard orderings on ideals on ω (Rudin–Keisler, Tukey, Katětov) and their impact on the cardinal invariants of the ideals. Basic theory of analytic P-ideals on ω and examples are also reviewed here. Known results on additivity and cofinality of analytic P-ideals are summarized in the second section. The main part of the paper is contained in the third section. There we study the order of Katětov restricted to analytic P-ideals, giving a detailed description of how the summable and density ideals are placed in the Katětov order. For the rest of the section, we focus on the ideal of asymptotic density zero and compare its covering number to standard cardinal invariants of the continuum. We prove that min{b, cov(N)} ≤ cov(Z) ≤ max{b, non(N)} and mention some consistency results. We introduce the notion of a totally bounded analytic P-ideal and show that Received by the editors October 5, 2004; revised September 19, 2005. The authors gratefully acknowledge support from PAPIIT grant IN106705. The second author’s research was also partially supported by GA CR grant 201-03-0933 and CONACYT grant 40057-F AMS subject classification: 03E17, 03E40. c ©Canadian Mathematical Society 2007. 575 576 F. Hernandez-Hernandez and M. Hrusak all analytic P-ideals which are not totally bounded can be destroyed by a weakly distributive forcing. In the last section we study the separating number of analytic P-ideals, an invariant closely related to the Laver and Mathias–Prikry type forcings associated with the ideal. Two major problems remain open here: (1) Is add(I) = add(N) for every tall analytic P-ideal I? (2) Can every analytic P-ideal be destroyed by a weakly distributive forcing? What about Z? We assume knowledge of the method of forcing as well as the basic theory of cardinal invariants of the continuum as covered in [BJ]. Our notation is standard and follows [Ku, Je, BJ]. In particular, c0, l1 and l∞ denote the standard Banach spaces of sequences of reals. For A,B infinite subsets of ω, we say that A is almost contained in B (A ⊆ B) if A \ B is finite. The symbol A = Bmeans that A ⊆ B and B ⊆ A. For functions f , g ∈ ω we write f ≤ g to mean that there is some m ∈ ω such that f (n) ≤ g(n) for all n ≥ m. The bounding number b is the least cardinal of an ≤-unbounded family of functions in ω . The dominating number d is the least cardinal of a ≤-cofinal family of functions in ω . Recall that a family of subsets of ω has the strong finite intersection property if any finite subfamily has infinite intersection. The pseudointersection number p is the minimal size of a family of subsets of ω with the strong finite intersection property but without an infinite pseudointersection (i.e., without a common lower bound in the ⊆ order). A family S ⊆ P(ω) is a splitting family if for every infinite A ⊆ ω there is an S ∈ S such that S ∩ A and A \ S are infinite. The splitting number s is the minimal size of a splitting family in P(ω). The set 2 is equipped with the product topology, that is, the topology with basic open sets of the form [s] = {x ∈ 2 : s ⊆ x}, where s ∈ 2 . The topology of P(ω) is that obtained via the identification of each subset of ω with its characteristic function. An ideal on X is a family of subsets of X closed under taking finite unions and subsets of its members. We assume throughout the paper that all ideals contain all singletons {x} for x ∈ X. An ideal I on ω is called P-ideal if for any sequence Xn ∈ I, n ∈ ω, there exists X ∈ I such that Xn ⊆ ∗ X for all n ∈ ω. An ideal I on ω is analytic if it is analytic as a subspace of P(ω) with the above topology. Recall that an ideal on ω is tall (or dense) if every infinite set of ω contains an infinite set from the ideal. If I is an ideal on ω and Y ⊆ ω is an infinite set, then we denote by I↾Y the ideal {I ∩ Y : I ∈ I}; note that the underlying set of the ideal I↾Y is not the underlying set of I but Y . For an ideal I on ω, I denotes the dual filter, M denotes the ideal of meager subsets of R, and N the ideal of Lebesgue null subsets of R. Given an ideal I on a set X, the following are standard cardinal invariants associated with I: add(I) = min{|A| : A ⊆ I ∧ ⋃ A / ∈ I}, cov(I) = min{|A| : A ⊆ I ∧ ⋃ A = X}, cof(I) = min{|A| : A ⊆ I ∧ (∀I ∈ I)(∃A ∈ A)(I ⊆ A)}, non(I) = min{|Y | : Y ⊆ X ∧Y / ∈ I}. The provable relationships between the cardinal invariants of M and N are Cardinal Invariants of Analytic P-Ideals 577 summed up in the following diagram: cov(N) // non(M) // cof(M) // cof(N)