English

Stable moduli spaces of hermitian forms

K-Theory and Homology 2025-04-16 v5 Algebraic Topology

Abstract

We prove that Grothendieck-Witt spaces of Poincar\'e categories are, in many cases, group completions of certain moduli spaces of hermitian forms. This, in particular, identifies Karoubi's classical hermitian and quadratic K-groups with the genuine Grothendieck-Witt groups from our joint work with Calm\`es, Dotto, Harpaz, Land, Moi, Nardin and Nikolaus, and thereby completes our solution of several conjectures in hermitian K-theory. The method of proof is abstracted from work of Galatius and Randal-Williams on cobordism categories of manifolds using the identification of the Grothendieck-Witt space of a Poincar\'e category as the homotopy type of the associated cobordism category.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2103.13911,
  title  = {Stable moduli spaces of hermitian forms},
  author = {Fabian Hebestreit and Wolfgang Steimle},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2103.13911},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

100 pages, with an appendix by Yonatan Harpaz. v5: Updated references and fixed a colourful LaTeX error

R2 v1 2026-06-24T00:33:31.264Z