No label defined (Q4946327)

The purpose of this paper is to define a reasonable topological cyclic homology (\(\text{TC}\)) for schemes. Many interesting results are proven in this paper, and the authors have taken the opportunity to spell out yet another foundation for the theory using the symmetric spectra of \textit{M. Hovey, B. Shipley} and \textit{J. Smith} [J. Am. Math. Soc. 13, No.~1, 149-208 (2000; Zbl 0931.55006)]. Topological cyclic homology was introduced by \textit{M. Bökstedt, W. C. Hsiang} and \textit{I. Madsen} [Invent. Math. 111, No.~3, 465-539 (1993; Zbl 0804.55004)], and has proved to be a good invariant for studying algebraic \(K\)-theory. \textit{R. McCarthy} [Acta Math. 179, No.~2, 197-222 (1997; Zbl 0913.19001)] and the reviewer [\textit{B. Dundas}, Acta Math. 179, No. 2, 223-242 (1997; Zbl 0913.19002)] have proven that the difference between algebraic \(K\)-theory and topological cyclic homology is in some sense ``locally constant''. Several authors, including Bökstedt, Hesselholt, Madsen and Rognes has used this property to calculate algebraic \(K\)-theory in important examples by analyzing topological cyclic homology. In particular, the last author and Madsen have demonstrated that topological cyclic homology is well behaved for algebras over perfect fields of positive characteristic and deduced many interesting \(K\)-theoretic results, see e.g. \textit{L. Hesselhold} [Acta Math. 177, No.~1, 1-53 (1996; Zbl 0892.19003)]. In the paper under review, the authors extend the definition of topological Hochschild homology to schemes using Thomason's hypercohomology construction \(\mathbb{H}^{\dot{}}(X,-)\). The standard approach is then applied to construct topological cyclic homology from topological Hochschild homology. This definition is reasonable in that it agrees with the old definition for affine schemes, and it does not depend on the topology coarser than the étale topology. For smooth schemes over perfect fields of positive characteristic \(p\) the authors identify the topological cyclic homology sheaf for the Zariski and étale topology. In fact, if \(X\) is such a scheme, the equivalence of Thomason and Trobaugh \[ K(X)^{\widehat{}}_p\simeq\mathbb{H}^{\dot{}}(X_{\text{Zar}},K(-)^{\widehat{}}_p) \] and the equivalence proved in the paper \[ \text{TC}(X,p)\simeq\mathbb{H}^{\dot{}}(X_{\text{ét}},K(-)^{\widehat{}}_p) \] allows one to identify the cyclotomic trace with the change of topology map \[ \mathbb{H}^{\dot{}}(X_{\text{Zar}},K(-)^{\widehat{}}_p)\to \mathbb{H}^{\dot{}}(X_{\text{ét}},K(-)^{\widehat{}}_p). \] Using the last equivalence above they give a formula calculating the topological cyclic homology groups of a field of positive characteristic in terms of its \(K\)-groups. Another interesting result is that \(\text{TC}(X,p)\) vanishes above the dimension of \(X\). The appendix contains a proof of the fact that the cyclotomic trace respects the multiplicative structure for commutative rings. More precisely, if \(\mathcal C\) is an exact category with a strict symmetric monoidal bi-exact structure, then the cyclotomic trace \[ K(\mathcal C)\to \text{TC}(\mathcal C,p) \] is a map of symmetric spectra. For the entire collection see [Zbl 0931.00031].