2017/07/06 by Nikolaus, Thomas, Scholze, Peter
#13D03 #16E40 #19D55 #55P42 #55P43 #55P91 #55P92 #Algebraic Topology (math.AT) #FOS: Mathematics #K-Theory and Homology (math.KT)
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1707.01799
Topological cyclic homology is a refinement of Connes--Tsygan's cyclic homology which was introduced by Bökstedt--Hsiang--Madsen in 1993 as an approximation to algebraic K-theory. There is a trace map from algebraic K-theory to topological cyclic homology, and a theorem of Dundas--Goodwillie--McCarthy asserts that this induces an equivalence of relative theories for nilpotent immersions, which gives a way for computing K-theory in various situations. The construction of topological cyclic homology is based on genuine equivariant homotopy theory, the use of explicit point-set models, and the elaborate notion of a cyclotomic spectrum. The goal of this paper is to revisit this theory using only homotopy-invariant notions. In particular, we give a new construction of topological cyclic homology. This is based on a new definition of the ∞-category of cyclotomic spectra: We define a cyclotomic spectrum to be a spectrum X with S1-action (in the most naive sense) together with S1-equivariant maps φp: X→ XtCp for all primes p. Here XtCp=cofib(Nm: XhCp→ XhCp) is the Tate construction. On bounded below spectra, we prove that this agrees with previous definitions. As a consequence, we obtain a new and simple formula for topological cyclic homology. In order to construct the maps φp: X→ XtCp in the example of topological Hochschild homology we introduce and study Tate diagonals for spectra and Frobenius homomorphisms of commutative ring spectra. In particular we prove a version of the Segal conjecture for the Tate diagonals and relate these Frobenius homomorphisms to power operations.