The big de Rham-Witt complex (Q2340956)

The author provides a new construction of the big re Rham-Witt complex, a tool he introduced jointly with Madsen to analyse topological Hochschild spectra of rings [\textit{L. Hesselholt} and \textit{I. Madsen}, Contemp. Math. 271, 127--140 (2001; Zbl 0992.19002)]. The new construction is more explicit than the original one, and also incorporates a corrected account of the 2-torsion. The constructions rests on a theory of modules and derivations over \(\lambda\)-rings, developed in \S2 of the paper. It is shown that for every \(\lambda\)-ring there exists a universal \(\lambda\)-derivation, and that the resulting module of differentials is the usual one when neglecting the \(\lambda\)-structure (Theorem A). In \S3--\S4 the author presents the actual construction. The notion of a Witt complex is introduced, and the big de Rham-Witt complex of a ring is defined to be the initial Witt complex of a ring. Existence of such a universal object is established in Theorem B. The paper finishes with an analysis of how the big de-Rham Witt complex behaves with respect to étale maps (Theorem C, \S5), and with an explicit computation of the big de Rham-Witt complex of the ring of integers in~\S6. As promised in the introduction the description is very explicit, but too long to be repeated here. The paper also contains a section on Witt vectors (\S1), and a very helpful introduction. While the material is necessarily rather technical, the presentation is very clear throughout, and supported by helpful recollections of material from other publications.