Filtrations of global equivariant K-theory

Abstract

Arone and Lesh constructed and studied spectrum level filtrations that interpolate between connective (topological or algebraic) K-theory and the Eilenberg-MacLane spectrum for the integers. In this paper we consider (global) equivariant generalizations of these filtrations and of another closely related class of filtrations, the modified rank filtrations of the K-theory spectra themselves. We lift Arone and Lesh's description of the filtration subquotients to the equivariant context and apply it to compute algebraic filtrations on representation rings that arise on equivariant homotopy groups. It turns out that these representation ring filtrations are considerably easier to express globally than over a fixed compact Lie group. Furthermore, they have formal similarities to the filtration on Burnside rings induced by the symmetric products of spheres, which was computed by Schwede.