Odd primary analogs of real orientations (Q6043680)

In this article, beginning with the third author's construction of a \(C_p\)-equivariant space \({\mathbb C}{\mathbb P}^\infty_{\mu_p}\) for odd primes \(p\) analogous to the infinite complex projective space \({\mathbb C} {\mathbb P}^\infty\) with a \(C_2\)-action by complex conjugation, the authors study the equivariant, chromatic (multiplicatively unstructured) orientation theory associated with this space along the lines of the case when \(p = 2\), the latter being central to the recent developments following Hill, Hopkins, and Ravenel's solution of the Kervaire invariant one problem. Specifically, they establish such orientability for the \(C_p\)-equivariant Morava \(E\)-theory \(E_{p-1}\) associated to the Honda formal group, with the \(C_p\)-action given by a choice of an order-\(p\) element in the Morava stabilizer group, as well as for the \(C_3\)-equivariant 3-local connective ring spectrum \(\mathrm{tmf}(2)\) of topological modular forms with level-\(\Gamma(2)\) structure, on which \(C_3 \subset \Sigma_3 \cong \mathrm{SL}_2({\mathbb F}_2)\) acts naturally. Moreover, given each of these equivariant spectra, the authors show generation for their equivariant homotopy groups by a single ``equivariant \(v_1\)-self map'' as a norm. They also examine suitably defined notions of homotopical and homological evenness and their relationship to orientations. The article contains a list of questions for further investigation, notably, equivariant analogues for the complex cobordism and Brown-Peterson spectra and their orientations, which originally motivated this work with \({\mathbb C} {\mathbb P}^\infty\).