Eilenberg-MacLane mapping algebras and higher distributivity up to homotopy (Q1747841)

In the comprehensive monograph [The algebra of secondary cohomology operations. Basel: Birkhäuser (2006; Zbl 1091.55001)], the first author has determined the algebraic structure of the secondary operations. The goal of this paper is to introduce a topological version of the Steenrod algebra which encodes the secondary and all higher order cohomology operations. This approach starts with the observation that the Steenrod algebra consists of homotopy classes of maps between Eilenberg-MacLane spectra. Building on this, the authors consider the following richer structure. Let \textbf{Spec} denote the Bousfield-Friedlander category of simplicial spectra, which is enriched over Top\(_*\) by taking the geometric realization of the function complex. For an abelian group A, there is an Eilenberg-MacLane spectrum HA in \textbf{Spec}, i.e. \((HA)_n=K(A,n)\), which is a fibrant and cofibrant abelian group object in \textbf{Spec}, with addition map \(+: HA\times HA \to HA\) compatible with that of \(A\) (Lemma A.6 in the Appendix). For \(n\in \mathbb Z\), let \(K_n\) have the homotopy type of \(\Sigma^nH\mathbb F_p\). Definition 3.3 describes the main object: The mod p \textit{Eilenberg-MacLane Mapping theory} \(\mathcal{EM}\) is the full subcategory of \textbf{Spec} consisting of the finite products \[ K_{n_1}\times \dots \times K_{n_k} \] This is the topological version of the Steenrod algebra. Definition 3.6 describes the main concept: A Top\(_*\)-category \(\mathcal{T}\) is called (a) \textit{a mapping theory} if it is small and has finite products; (b) \textit{left linear} if all mapping spaces \(\mathcal{T}(A,B)\) are topological monoids, with the basepoint acting as the additive identity, and composition being left linear. Moreover, a mapping theory is \textit{weakly bilinear} if it is left linear and for all \(A,B,Z\) the following canonical map is a trivial fibration: \[ \mathcal{T}(A\times B,Z) \longrightarrow \mathcal{T}(A,Z)\times \mathcal{T}(B,Z) \] Proposition 3.4 states that the mapping theory \(\mathcal{EM}\) has the properties above. Section 4 introduces higher distributivity by higher dimensional cubes and the next section contains the main theorem: a weakly bilinear mapping theory is \(\infty\)-distributive in a canonical way (Proposition 5.9 and Theorem 5.10). As an application, the authors show that the Kristensen's derivation in the mod 2 Steenrod algebra can be obtained as an application of 1-distributivity of \(\mathcal{EM}\).