Trace and duality in symmetric monoidal categories (Q2502115)

For a symmetric monoidal category \(\mathcal C\) with a realization functor for simplicial objects in it, we can take any monoid \(R\) in \(\mathcal C\) and any \(R\)-bimodule \(E\), and construct and then realize the Hochschild complex of \(R\) in \(E\). In the category of chain complexes, this is exactly Hochschild homology; in the category of symmetric spectra, this is Shipley's definition of topological Hochschild homology. If \(\mathcal C\) is a monoidal model category and \(N\) is a left \(R\)-module which is what the author calls `of trace type' (which typically happens when it satisfies a strong finiteness condition), then in the homotopy category \(\text{Ho}({\mathcal C})\), the paper describes a trace map \(\text{Tr}(N)\) from \(\Hom_R(N,E\otimes_R N)\) to the realization of the Hochschild complex of \(R\) with coefficients in \(E\). This specializes to trace maps defined by Dold and Puppe and, for the category of vector spaces over a field, to the original trace map \(\Hom_{\mathbb F}(V,V)\to {\mathbb F}\) for finite dimensional \(V\). For parametrized families of self maps of a space \(X\), i.e. maps \(F: B\times X\to X\), when \(X\) is a finitely dominated CW complex with some other technical conditions, the trace above defines a map \[ R(F)_*:H_*(B)\to\text{HH}_*({\mathbb Z}G,{^\phi{\mathbb Z}}G), \] where \(G=\pi_1(X,x_0)\) and \(^\phi{\mathbb Z}G\) is \({\mathbb Z}G\) taken as a bimodule over itself with the \({\mathbb Z}G\) action twisted by the homomorphism induced on \({\mathbb Z}G\) by the map \(F(b_0, -)\) (with a choice of path from \(x_0\) to \(F(b_0, x_0)\)). This can be refined and applied to (a CW approximation of) \(\text{ev}: X^X\times X\to X\) to give a `higher Euler characteristic' \(e(X)\in H^0(X^X;{^\eta\text{hh}}_*({\mathbb Z}G))\) for an appropriate twisting \(\eta\). Similarly, in the category of symmetric spectra, given the map \(F: B\times X\to X\) with technical assumptions as above, one can take the symmetric spectrum \(\Sigma^\infty G_+\) and the author describes a map \[ R^s(F)_*: \pi_*^s(B_+)\to \pi_*(\text{THH}(\Sigma^\infty G_+,{^\phi\Sigma}^\infty G_+)) \] which (when applied to ev) yields another `higher Euler characteristic' \[ e^s(X)\in H^0(X^X;{^\eta\text{THH}}(\Sigma^\infty G_+)). \]