Hopf rings in algebraic topology (Q1596345)

This is a survey article about Hopf rings, mainly written for non-topologists and graduate students. This lucid well-written exposition of the topic will be useful for those who want to start learning about Hopf rings. Historically, the main example of Hopf rings which arises in algebraic topology is the homology of classifying spaces. Explicitly, if \(X\to F(X)\) is a representable functor from the homotopy category of spaces to the category of graded rings, with classifying space \(F\), then \(F\) is a ring object in the homotopy category and it turns out that \(H_*(F)\) is a Hopf ring (a graded ring object in the category of co-algebras), where \(H_*\) denotes the \(\text{mod }2\) homology. The present article describes this point of view in great details. Among the most important examples of Hopf rings which arise as above and described at length in the paper are \(H_*(Z\times BO)\), \(H_*({\mathbf H}_*)\), \({\mathbf H}_*\) being the Eilenberg-Maclane spectrum. A more general approach to obtain Hopf rings is also discussed in the paper. Let \(G^*(X)\) be a graded ring valued generalized cohomology theory classified by \(G_*\) and let \(E_*(X)\) be a generalized homology theory. Suppose that the natural map \(E_*G_n\otimes E_*G_n\to E_*(G_n\times G_n)\) is an isomorphism, then \(E_*G_*\) is a Hopf ring. As for examples, \(k(n)_*G_*\), where \(k(n)_*\) denotes the Morava \(K\)-theory, \(H_*(MU_*,\mathbb{Z})\) and \(MU_*({\mathbf M}{\mathbf U}_*)\) are Hopf rings, where \(MU_*\) is the complex bordism theory and \({\mathbf M}{\mathbf U}_*\) is the corresponding \(\Omega\)-spectrum. At the end, the author describes briefly how to compute Hopf rings \(E_*G_*\) by using the bar spectral sequence for a loop space.