Abstract For many years, there have been conducting research (e.g., by Bergelson, Furstenberg, Kojman, Kubiś, Shelah, Szeptycki, Weiss) into sequentially compact spaces that are, in a sense, topological counterparts of some combinatorial theorems, for instance, Ramsey’s theorem for coloring graphs, Hindman’s finite sums theorem, and van der Waerden’s arithmetical progressions theorem. These spaces are defined with the aid of different kinds of convergences: IP-convergence, R-convergence, and ordinary convergence. The first aim of this paper is to present a unified approach to these various types of convergences and spaces. Then, using this unified approach, we prove some general theorems about existence of the considered spaces and show that all results obtained so far in this subject can be derived from our theorems. The second aim of this paper is to obtain new results about the specific types of these spaces. For instance, we construct a Hausdorff Hindman space that is not an $\mathcal {I}_{1/n}$ -space and a Hausdorff differentially compact space that is not Hindman. Moreover, we compare Ramsey spaces with other types of spaces. For instance, we construct a Ramsey space that is not Hindman and a Hindman space that is not Ramsey. The last aim of this paper is to provide a characterization that shows when there exists a space of one considered type that is not of the other kind. This characterization is expressed in purely combinatorial manner with the aid of the so-called Katětov order that has been extensively examined for many years so far. This paper may interest the general audience of mathematicians as the results we obtain are on the intersection of topology, combinatorics, set theory, and number theory.

Abstract Let $\mathcal {I}$ be an ideal on $\omega $ . For $f,\,g\in \omega ^{\omega }$ we write $f \leq _{\mathcal {I}} g$ if $f(n) \leq g(n)$ for all $n\in \omega \setminus A$ with some $A\in \mathcal {I}$ . Moreover, we denote $\mathcal {D}_{\mathcal {I}}=\{f\in \omega ^{\omega }: f^{-1}[\{n\}]\in \mathcal {I} \text { for every } n\in \omega \}$ (in particular, $\mathcal {D}_{\mathrm {Fin}}$ denotes the family of all finite-to-one functions). We examine cardinal numbers $\mathfrak {b}(\geq _{\mathcal {I}}\cap (\mathcal {D}_{\mathcal {I}} \times \mathcal {D}_{\mathcal {I}}))$ and $\mathfrak {b}(\geq _{\mathcal {I}}\cap (\mathcal {D}_{\mathrm {Fin}}\times \mathcal {D}_{\mathrm {Fin}}))$ describing the smallest sizes of unbounded from below with respect to the order $\leq _{\mathcal {I}}$ sets in $\mathcal {D}_{\mathrm {Fin}}$ and $\mathcal {D}_{\mathcal {I}}$ , respectively. For a maximal ideal $\mathcal {I}$ , these cardinals were investigated by M. Canjar in connection with coinitial and cofinal subsets of the ultrapowers. We show that $\mathfrak {b}(\geq _{\mathcal {I}}\cap (\mathcal {D}_{\mathrm {Fin}} \times \mathcal {D}_{\mathrm {Fin}})) =\mathfrak {b}$ for all ideals $\mathcal {I}$ with the Baire property and that $\aleph _1 \leq \mathfrak {b}(\geq _{\mathcal {I}}\cap (\mathcal {D}_{\mathcal {I}} \times \mathcal {D}_{\mathcal {I}})) \leq \mathfrak {b}$ for all coanalytic weak P-ideals (this class contains all $\bf {\Pi ^0_4}$ ideals). What is more, we give examples of Borel (even $\bf {\Sigma ^0_2}$ ) ideals $\mathcal {I}$ with $\mathfrak {b}(\geq _{\mathcal {I}}\cap (\mathcal {D}_{\mathcal {I}} \times \mathcal {D}_{\mathcal {I}}))=\mathfrak {b}$ as well as with $\mathfrak {b}(\geq _{\mathcal {I}}\cap (\mathcal {D}_{\mathcal {I}} \times \mathcal {D}_{\mathcal {I}})) =\aleph _1$ . We also study cardinals $\mathfrak {b}(\geq _{\mathcal {I}}\cap (\mathcal {D}_{\mathcal {J}} \times \mathcal {D}_{\mathcal {K}}))$ describing the smallest sizes of sets in $\mathcal {D}_{\mathcal {K}}$ not bounded from below with respect to the preorder $\leq _{\mathcal {I}}$ by any member of $\mathcal {D}_{\mathcal {J}}\!$ . Our research is partially motivated by the study of ideal-QN-spaces: those cardinals describe the smallest size of a space which is not ideal-QN.

Abstract We show that there exist uncountably many (tall and nontall) pairwise nonisomorphic density-like ideals on $\omega $ which are not generalized density ideals. In addition, they are nonpathological. This answers a question posed by Borodulin-Nadzieja et al. in [this Journal, vol. 80 (2015), pp. 1268–1289]. Lastly, we provide sufficient conditions for a density-like ideal to be necessarily a generalized density ideal.