Topological Hochschild homology and the homotopy descent problem (Q1382179)

This paper considers the circle action on the topological Hochschild homology spectrum \(\text{THH}(R)\) of a ring \(R\), and in particular the restriction of that action to the finite subgroups \(C_n\) of \(S^1\). It shows that if for some prime \(p\), the obvious map \(\text{THH}(R)^{C_p}\to \text{THH}(R)^{h C_p}\) induces an isomorphism on all the \(p\)-adically completed stable homotopy groups, then the same is true for the analogous maps \(\text{THH}(R)^{C_{p^n}}\to \text{THH}(R)^{h C_{p^n}}\) for all \(n\geq 2\). The importance of this result is that the actual fixed points \(\text{THH}(R)^{C_{p^n}}\) are used to define topological cyclic homology, but the homotopy fixed points \(\text{THH}(R)^{h C_{p^n}}\) are computationally more approachable. In another paper [\textit{S. Tsalidis}, Am. J. Math. 119, No. 1, 103-125 (1997; Zbl 0864.19002)] the author did the latter calculation, and the combined result confirmed the conjecture needed by Bökstedt and Madsen to complete their calculation of the topological cyclic homology of the integers.