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Tim Campion
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Are there non-obvious finite $E_\infty$ ring spectra?

I see two "obvious" classes of finite $E_\infty$ ring spectra $R$:

  • $R = \Sigma^\infty_+ (S^1)^{\times n}$

  • $R = D\Sigma^\infty_+ X$ ($X$ a finite space)

Questions:

  1. Are there any others?

  2. In all the above examples, the unit map $\mathbb S \to R$ splits off. Is this always the case?

  3. In the second class of examples, I believe all elements of $\pi_\ast R$ not in the image of the unit $\pi_\ast \mathbb S \to \pi_\ast R$ are nilpotent. How generally is this true? Is it true for all examples not in the first class of examples?

  4. How does the answer change if we localize at a prime, or perform some more drastic localization?

Tim Campion
  • 64k
  • 13
  • 143
  • 384