English

Radicals and Nilpotents in Equivariant Algebra

Algebraic Topology 2026-02-02 v1 Commutative Algebra

Abstract

Associated to each Tambara functor TT is its Nakaoka spectrum Spec(T)\mathrm{Spec}(T), analogous to the Zariski spectrum of a commutative ring. We establish that this topological space is spectral. This result follows from an analysis of the notion of nilpotence in Tamabra functors. We prove that the nilradical of a Tambara functor TT (the intersection of all of its prime ideals) is computed levelwise, i.e. consists precisely of the nilpotent elements in TT. In contrast to ordinary commutative algebra, the nilpotents of TT are not the same as the elements xx such that T[1/x]=0T[1/x] = 0; we therefore also give a classification of these elements. As a corollary, we observe that the set of these elements in πs\pi_\star^s (the equivariant stable stems, viewed as an RO(G)\mathrm{RO}(G)-graded Tambara functor) forms an ideal.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2601.23247,
  title  = {Radicals and Nilpotents in Equivariant Algebra},
  author = {David Chan and Ben Spitz},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.23247},
  year   = {2026}
}

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