Rational Sp(2)-equivariant cohomology theories I: dominant subgroups

Abstract

We give a general description of the spectral space of conjugacy classes of subgroups of Sp(2): it is a disjoint union of finitely many blocks, each dominated by a subgroup: of these blocks, 26 are of dimension 1, 6 are of dimension 2 and the remainder are isolated points. On each of these blocks there is a sheaf of polynomial rings and a component structure. These are the ingredients for constructing an abelian category A(Sp(2)) designed to reflect the structure of rational Sp(2)-equivariant cohomology theories. We assemble the results from earlier papers in the series to show that the category of rational Sp(2)-spectra is Quillen equivalent to the category of differential graded objects of A(Sp(2)). In the sequel we will make the fine structure of A(Sp(2)) explicit, and make calculations based upon it.