Uniformity of the meager ideal and maximal cofinitary groups (Q1588399)

A subgroup of the infinite symmetric group \(\text{Sym}(\omega)\) is cofinitary if every non-identity element has just finitely many fixed points. Let \(a_g\) denote the least cardinal \(\lambda\) such that there is a maximal cofinitary subgroup \(G\) of \(\text{Sym}(\omega)\) with \(|G|=\lambda\). The main result of the paper is that \(a_g\) is at least as large as the size of the least non-meager set of reals. It follows that it is consistent that \(a_g\) is strictly bigger than both the minimal size of an infinite maximal almost disjoint family of subsets of \(\omega\), and the least \(\lambda\) such that the set of reals is the union of \(\lambda\) many meager sets. The same results are proved with \(a_g\) replaced by \(a_p\) (the least \(\lambda\) such that there is a maximal almost disjoint subset of \(\text{Sym}(\omega)\) of size \(\lambda\)). It also follows that assuming Martin's Axiom, \(a_g=2^\omega\). There is a separate proof of a weaker result, namely that \(a_p\) and \(a_g\) are at least as big as the least size of an unbounded subset of \(\omega^\omega\) (ordered by eventual dominance). The authors also prove a consistency result about the spectrum of cardinalities of maximal cofinitary groups.