Stable Homotopy Theory

The beginning graduate student in homotopy theory is confronted with a vast literature on spectra that is scattered across books, articles and decades. There is much folklore but very few easy entry points. This comprehensive introduction to stable homotopy theory changes that. It presents the foundations of the subject together in one place for the first time, from the motivating phenomena to the modern theory, at a level suitable for those with only a first course in algebraic topology. Starting from stable homotopy groups and (co)homology theories, the authors study the most important categories of spectra and the stable homotopy category, before moving on to computational aspects and more advanced topics such as monoidal structures, localisations and chromatic homotopy theory. The appendix containing essential facts on model categories, the numerous examples and the suggestions for further reading make this a friendly introduction to an often daunting subject.

Nilpotence and Periodicity in Stable Homotopy Theory describes some major advances made in algebraic topology in recent years, centering on the nilpotence and periodicity theorems, which were conjectured by the author in 1977 and proved by Devinatz, Hopkins, and Smith in 1985. During the last ten years a number of significant advances have been made in homotopy theory, and this book fills a real need for an up-to-date text on that topic. Ravenel's first few chapters are written with a general mathematical audience in mind. They survey both the ideas that lead up to the theorems and their applications to homotopy theory. The book begins with some elementary concepts of homotopy theory that are needed to state the problem. This includes such notions as homotopy, homotopy equivalence, CW-complex, and suspension. Next the machinery of complex cobordism, Morava K-theory, and formal group laws in characteristic p are introduced. The latter portion of the book provides specialists with a coherent and rigorous account of the proofs. It includes hitherto unpublished material on the smash product and chromatic convergence theorems and on modular representations of the symmetric group.

This book is a foundational piece of work in stable homotopy theory and in the theory of transformation groups. It may be roughly divided into two parts. The first part deals with foundations of (equivariant) stable homotopy theory. A workable category of CW-spectra is developed. The foundations are such that an action of a compact Lie group is considered throughout, and spectra allow desuspension by arbitrary representations. But even if the reader forgets about group actions, he will find many details of the theory worked out for the first time. More subtle constructions like smash products, function spectra, change of group isomorphisms, fixed point and orbit spectra are treated. While it is impossible to survey properly the material which is covered in the book, it does boast these general features: (i) a thorough and reliable presentation of the foundations of the theory; (ii) a large number of basic results, principal applications, and fundamental techniques presented for the first time in a coherent theory, unifying numerous treatments of special cases in the literature.

A complete and definitive account of the authors' resolution of the Kervaire invariant problem in stable homotopy theory.

J. Frank Adams, the founder of stable homotopy theory, gave a lecture series at the University of Chicago in 1967, 1970, and 1971, the well-written notes of which are published in this classic in algebraic topology. The three series focused on Novikov's work on operations in complex cobordism, Quillen's work on formal groups and complex cobordism, and stable homotopy and generalized homology. Adams's exposition of the first two topics played a vital role in setting the stage for modern work on periodicity phenomena in stable homotopy theory. His exposition on the third topic occupies the bulk of the book and gives his definitive treatment of the Adams spectral sequence along with many detailed examples and calculations in KU-theory that help give a feel for the subject.

Since the publication of its first edition, this book has served as one of the few available on the classical Adams spectral sequence, and is the best account on the Adams-Novikov spectral sequence. This new edition has been updated in many places, especially the final chapter, which has been completely rewritten with an eye toward future research in the field. It remains the definitive reference on the stable homotopy groups of spheres. The first three chapters introduce the homotopy groups of spheres and take the reader from the classical results in the field though the computational aspects of the classical Adams spectral sequence and its modifications, which are the main tools topologists have to investigate the homotopy groups of spheres. Nowadays, the most efficient tools are the Brown-Peterson theory, the Adams-Novikov spectral sequence, and the chromatic spectral sequence, a device for analyzing the global structure of the stable homotopy groups of spheres and relating them to the cohomology of the Morava stabilizer groups. These topics are described in detail in Chapters 4 to 6. The revamped Chapter 7 is the computational payoff of the book, yielding a lot of information about the stable homotopy group of spheres. Appendices follow, giving self-contained accounts of the theory of formal group laws and the homological algebra associated with Hopf algebras and Hopf algebroids. The book is intended for anyone wishing to study computational stable homotopy theory. It is accessible to graduate students with a knowledge of algebraic topology and recommended to anyone wishing to venture into the frontiers of the subject.

This book gives an axiomatic presentation of stable homotopy theory. It starts with axioms defining a 'stable homotopy category'; using these axioms, one can make various constructions - cellular towers, Bousfield localization, and Brown representability, to name a few. Much of the book is devoted to these constructions and to the study of the global structure of stable homotopy categories. Next, a number of examples of such categories are presented. Some of these arise in topology (the ordinary stable homotopy category of spectra, categories of equivariant spectra, and Bousfield localizations of these), and others in algebra (coming from the representation theory of groups or of Lie algebras, as well as the derived category of a commutative ring). Hence one can apply many of the tools of stable homotopy theory to these algebraic situations.This work: provides a reference for standard results and constructions in stable homotopy theory; discusses applications of those results to algebraic settings, such as group theory and commutative algebra; provides a unified treatment of several different situations in stable homotopy, including equivariant stable homotopy and localizations of the stable homotopy category; and, also provides a context for nilpotence and thick subcategory theorems, such as the nilpotence theorem of Devinatz-Hopkins-Smith and the thick subcategory theorem of Hopkins-Smith in stable homotopy theory, and the thick subcategory theorem of Benson-Carlson-Rickard in representation theory. This book presents stable homotopy theory as a branch of mathematics in its own right with applications in other fields of mathematics. It is a first step toward making stable homotopy theory a tool useful in many disciplines of mathematics.

Eleven of the fourteen invited speakers at a symposium held by the Oxford Mathematical Institute in June 1972 have revised their contributions and submitted them for publication in this volume. The present papers do not necessarily closely correspond with the original talks, as it was the intention of the volume editor to make this book of mathematical rather than historical interest. The contributions will be of value to workers in topology in universities and polytechnics.