English

Picard Groups in Equivariant Algebra and Stable Homotopy Theory

Algebraic Topology 2025-12-19 v1

Abstract

Traditionally, homotopy groups in GG-equivariant stable homotopy theory have been graded over RO(G)\text{RO}(G), the real representation ring of GG. It is arguably more natural to grade homotopical structures over the Picard group of the equivariant stable homotopy category. Though there is a canonical map of abelian groups RO(G)Pic(Ho(SpG))\text{RO}(G) \rightarrow \text{Pic}(\text{Ho}(\text{Sp}^G)) relating the two, this map is neither injective or surjective in general. Fausk, Lewis, and May give an algebraic expression of Pic(Ho(SpG))\text{Pic}(\text{Ho}(\text{Sp}^G)) in terms of the Picard group of the Burnside ring A(G)A(G), and this work suggests a folklore isomorphism between Pic(A(G))\text{Pic}(A(G)) and Pic(MackG)\text{Pic}(\text{Mack}_G). We prove the existence of this folklore isomorphism in the setting of finite groups, then leverage our analysis to prove a classification of invertible Mackey functors in the setting of finite abelian groups. As a consequence, we furnish a classification of invertible A(G)A(G)-modules again for GG a finite abelian group.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2512.16002,
  title  = {Picard Groups in Equivariant Algebra and Stable Homotopy Theory},
  author = {Jesse Keyes and Jordan Sawdy},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.16002},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

22 pages. Comments welcome!