The special fiber of the motivic deformation of the stable homotopy category is algebraic (Q2044122)

The setting for this very interesting paper is the stable motivic homotopy category over the field \(\mathbb{C}\). The authors find the classical algebraic Adams-Novikov spectral sequence lurking in a surprising location inside the motivic universe, and they isolate a particular piece of motivic homotopy theory which they can prove has a purely algebraic description in terms of \(BP_*BP\)-comodules. This is an important development for passing information back and forth between motivic and classical homotopy theory. The authors demonstrate the efficacy of these methods by showing how to re-derive some historically-difficult differentials in the classical Adams spectral sequence. To state the results in more detail, fix a prime \(p\) and let \(H\mathbb{F}_p\) denote the mod \(p\) motivic cohomology spectrum. Let \(S\) be the motivic sphere spectrum and let \(\widehat{S}\) be the \(H\mathbb{F}_p\)-completion of \(S\). The bigraded stable homotopy groups of \(\widehat{S}\) have a special element \(\tau\in \pi_{0,1}(\widehat{S})\). Write \(\widehat{S}/\tau\) for the homotopy cofiber of \(\tau\), which the first author has shown to be an \(E_\infty\) motivic ring spectrum [Doc. Math. 23, 1077--1127 (2018; Zbl 1407.55007)]. The first main theorem of this paper establishes an equivalence of stable \(\infty\)-categories with \(t\)-structures \[ \mathcal{D}^b(BP_*BP \text{-\textbf{Comod}}^{ev}) \simeq (\widehat{S}/\tau \text{-\textbf{Mod}})^b_{\mathrm{Harm}}. \] On the left is the (purely algebraic) derived category of \(p\)-complete \(BP_*BP\)-comodules that are concentrated in even degrees. On the right is the subcategory of \(\widehat{S}/\tau\)-modules that are ``bounded'' and ``harmonic''. The latter condition means that the \(\widehat{S}/\tau\)-module is cellular and that the map to its \(MGL\)-completion is a \(\pi_{*,*}\)-isomorphism. The ``bounded'' condition is a type of finiteness for the \(MGL\)-homology. The question of whether some kind of equivalence of this type might exist was originally posed by Isaksen, and the paper constitutes the authors' inventive interpretation and answer to Isaksen's question. The second main theorem is an identification of the motivic Adams spectral sequence for \(\widehat{S}/\tau\) with the classical algebraic Adams-Novikov spectral sequence for the \(p\)-complete sphere spectrum. Consequently, the bigraded homotopy groups \(\pi_{*,*}(\widehat{S}/\tau)\) are identified (in a highly-structured manner) with \({\operatorname{Ext}}_{BP_*BP}^{*,*}(BP_*,BP_*)\). Techniques developed by \textit{D. C. Isaksen} and the second two authors [``More stable stems'', Preprint, \url{arxiv:2001.04511}] show that these results can be used to deduce differentials in the classical Adams spectral sequence. In an appendix to the current paper the authors demonstrate these methods for certain historically-difficult differentials at the prime \(2\), up through the 45-stem.