What are cyclotomic spectra and why do we need them?

Abstract

This paper is an expository account of cyclotomic spectra. They are spectra (in the sense of homotopy theory) with additional structure that includes an action of the circle group, which we will denote by $\mT$, for torus. Such objects come up in algebraic $K$-theory and its close relatives topological Hochschild homology $\THH$ and topological cyclic homology $\TopC$. They figure prominently in the recent disproof of the {\TC} for chromatic heights greater than 1 by Robert Burklund, Jeremy Hahn, Ishan Levy and Tomer Schlank . Those authors show that for each $n\geq 1$ and each prime $p$, there is a $p$-local ring spectrum $X$ of chromatic height $n$ such that $L_{K (n+1)}\TopC (X)$ and $L_{T (n+1)}\TopC (X)$ (see \cref{def-KT-KK}) are distinct. The present work is part of my attempt to understand theirs