Motivic stable homotopy and the stable 51 and 52 stems (Q2347045)

The authors resolve a long-standing ambiguity in the 2-torsion of the stable homotopy groups of spheres \(\pi_*^{\text{stable}}\otimes\mathbb Z_2\), building upon previous detailed calculations of the first author [``Stable stems'', \url{arXiv:1407.8418}]. The computation of a certain differential in the classical 2-primary Adams spectral sequence yields the following results on the 51- and 52-stems: \[ \pi_{51}^{\text{stable}}\otimes\mathbb Z_2 =(\mathbb Z/(8))^2\oplus\mathbb Z/(2)\quad \text{ or }\quad \mathbb Z/(8)\oplus\mathbb Z/(4)\oplus(\mathbb Z/(2))^2, \] and \[ \pi_{52}^{\text{stable}}\otimes\mathbb Z_2= (\mathbb Z/(2))^3 \] (the 51-stem answer depends on the existence of a possible hidden extension, yet to be resolved). What is remarkable is that the authors make essential use of \textit{motivic} stable homotopy theory -- a homotopy theory for algebraic varieties over a field \(k\) where ordinary spheres are replaced by a bigraded family \(S^{p,q}\) generated from smash products by \(S^{1,0}\) (the ordinary circle) and \(S^{0,1}=\mathbb A^1_{/k}-0\) (the punctured affine line). The proof uses the motivic analog of the 2-primary Adams spectral sequence. While motivic computations are made more difficult by an abundance of non-zero classes compared to the classical setting, the additional ``motivic weight'' grading can rule out possibilities that classical methods cannot. In addition to the main theorem, this paper serves to advertise the utility of motivic methods for computations in the stable homotopy groups of spheres.