Homotopy cardinality via extrapolation of Morava-Euler characteristics (Q6069185)

This article answers Baez's question about how the Euler characteristic and the Baez-Dolan homotopy cardinality are related [\textit{J. C. Baez} and \textit{J. Dolan}, in: Mathematics unlimited---2001 and beyond. Berlin: Springer. 29--50 (2001; Zbl 1004.18001)]. This is achieved by constructing a unique common generalization. Fix a prime \(p\) and a height \(0 \leq n \leq \infty \). Let \(K(n)(-)\) be the Morava extraordinary cohomology theory and let \(S^{p\text{-small}}\) be the category of spaces generated under finite colimits by \(\pi\)-finite \(p\)-spaces, i.e., those whose homotopy groups are \(p\)-groups. For any \(X \in S^{p\text{-small}}\) consider the dimension of \(K(n)(X)\), the module over the graded coefficient field \(k_n=K(n)(pt))=\mathbb{F}_p[v_n,v_n^{-1}]\), \(|v_n|=-2(p^n-1)\). The Morava-Euler characteristic is given by \[ \chi_n(X)=\dim_{k_n} K(n)^{\mathrm{even}}(X)-\dim_{k_n} K(n)^{\mathrm{odd}}(X). \] The author proves (Theorem \(B\)) that for any \(X \in S^{p\text{-small} }\), and prime \(l\,\, |\,\, (p-1)\) the sequence \(\chi_n(X)\) is uniformly \(l\)-adically continuous in \(n\) and its extrapolation to \(n=-1\) is a rational number. This is used to prove (Theorem \(A\)) that \[ |-|=\chi_{-1}:S^{p\text{-small}} \to \mathbb{Q} \] is a generalized homotopy cardinality function.