Picard sheaves, local Brauer groups, and topological modular forms (Q6564512)

In a recent work [Algebra Number Theory 14, No. 9, 2295--2333 (2020; Zbl 1459.14007)], the first and second named authors computed that the Brauer group \(\mathrm{Br}\) of the moduli stack \(\mathscr M\) of elliptic curves is trivial (and obtained many nontrivial groups when taking a base change of the moduli stack to other schemes, such as over a finite field of odd characteristic). In the present work, the author computed the Brauer group of the nonconnective spectral Deligne-Mumford stack \((\mathscr M, \mathscr O)\), where \(\mathscr O\) is Goerss, Hopkins, and Miller's sheaf of \(\mathbb E_\infty\)-ring spectra with \(\mathrm{TMF}\) the spectrum of its global sections. In both cases away from the prime 2 and at 2, they found that the Brauer group is nontrivial. The nontriviality manifests the presence of derived, nonclassical Azumaya algebras. As such, this continues the line of research by the first named author, Gepner, Lawson, and others on the Brauer groups of commutative ring spectra \(R\), among other arithmetic invariants. In their previous works, they found that \(\mathrm{Br}(\mathbb S)\) is trivial whereas \(\mathrm{Br}(KO)\) is not.\N\NTo achieve these, the authors introduced and effectively computed the subgroup of \(\mathrm{Br}(R)\) consisting of classes that are trivial étale locally, which they call the local Brauer group. It is smaller than \(\mathrm{Br}(R)\) for nonconnective ring spectra in general.