Formal groups and stable homotopy of commutative rings (Q1882820)

This paper is devoted to studying the homotopy type of a certain \(\Gamma\)-ring, \(DB\), for \(B\) a commutative ring, and relating it to the category of formal group laws over \(B\). \(\Gamma\)-spaces are a symmetric monoidal category whose objects can be thought of as functors from the category of pointed simplicial sets to themselves. There is a functor from \(\Gamma\)-spaces to connective spectra which induces an equivalence of the corresponding homotopy categories. \(\Gamma\)-rings are monoids in the category of \(\Gamma\)-spaces with respect to the smash product. There is an Eilenberg-MacLane functor, \(H\), which embeds the category of simplicial abelian groups as a full subcategory of \(\Gamma\)-spaces. The \(\Gamma\)-ring \(DB\) is constructed to parameterize the stable homotopy theory of augmented commutative simplicial \(B\)-algebras in the sense that there is a Quillen equivalence between the model categories of \(DB\) modules and of spectra of simplicial commutative \(B\) algebras. The homotopy groups of \(DB\) are additively isomorphic to the \(\Gamma\)-homology [\textit{A. Robinson} and \textit{S. Whitehouse}, Math. Proc. Camb. Philos. Soc. 132, 197--234 (2002; Zbl 0997.18004)] of \(B[X]\) and also to the André-Quillen homology of \(HB[X]\) relative to \(HB\). In the paper under review the author constructs, for any formal group law, \(F\), over \(B\), a map of \(\Gamma\)-rings \(F_*: H{\mathbb Z} \to DB\). This gives a bijection between strict isomorphism classes of formal group laws over \(B\) and set maps from \(H{\mathbb Z}\) to \(DB\) in the homotopy category of \(\Gamma\)-rings. The author constructs a natural conjugation action on the simplicial monoid of homotopy units of any \(\Gamma\)-ring, and the main result of the paper is that there is a weak equivalence between the classifying space of the groupoid of formal group laws and strict isomorphisms over \(B\) and the homotopy orbit space of this conjugation action, Ring \((H{\mathbb Z}, DB)/\)conj.