A result concerning cardinalities of ultraproducts

The cardinality problem for ultraproducts is as follows: Given an ultrafilter over a set I and cardinals αi, i ∈ I, what is the cardinality of the ultraproduct ? Although many special results are known, several problems remain open (see [5] for a survey). For example, consider a uniform ultrafilter over a set I of power κ (uniform means that all elements of have power κ). It is open whether every countably incomplete has the property that, for all infinite α, the ultra-power has power ακ. However, it is shown in [4] that certain countably incomplete , namely the κ-regular , have this property. This paper is about another cardinality property of ultrafilters which was introduced by Eklof [1] to study ultraproducts of abelian groups. It is open whether every countably incomplete ultrafilter has the Eklof property. We shall show that certain countably incomplete ultrafilters, the κ-good ultrafilters, do have this property. The κ-good ultrafilters are important in model theory because they are exactly the ultrafilters such that every ultraproduct modulo is κ-saturated (see [5]). Let be an ultrafilter on a set I. Let αi, n, i ∈ I, n ∈ ω, be cardinals and αi, n, ≥ αi, m if n < m. Let . Then ρn are nonincreasing and therefore there is some m and ρ such that ρn = ρ if n ≥ m. We call ρ the eventual value (abbreviated ev val) of ρn.