On functorial decompositions of self-smash products (Q1407645)

The \(n\)-fold smash product \(X^{(n)}\) of \(X\) with itself admits an action of the symmetric group. For \(\mathbb{Z}/p\) coefficients, this action gives a representation of the symmetric group on homology. Thus the \(n\)-fold tensor product of \(V = H_*(X,\mathbb{Z}/p)\) decomposes into irreducible representations of the symmetric group \(S_n\). If \(X = \Sigma Y\), then \([X^{(n)}, X^{(n)}] \) is an abelian group. Localizing at \(p\) gives rise to a representation of \(Z_{(p)}(S_n)\) on \([X^{(n)}, X^{(n)}] \). Now the algebra decomposes the identity into a sum of orthogonal projections \(\Sigma e_\alpha\) . Hence for each \(\alpha\), there is a homotopy idempotent \(f_\alpha\), and the orthogonality gives rise to a homotopy decomposition \((\Sigma Y)^{(n)} = \bigvee e_\alpha(Y)\) where \(e_\alpha(Y) = \text{ hocolim}_{f_\alpha}X^{(n)}\). The authors let \(p=2\) and \(Y\) consist of two cells localized at 2. Then they find the homology of \(Q_\lambda (Y)\) and obtain results on the Steenrod algebra. They apply their results to gain facts about representations using topological arguments, and they determine the decompositions of self smash products involving real and complex projective spaces. This is a well-written paper .