Steenrod operators, the Coulomb branch and the Frobenius twist

We observe a fundamental relationship between Steenrod operations and the Artin–Schreier morphism. We use Steenrod's construction, together with some new geometry related to the affine Grassmannian, to prove that the quantum Coulomb branch is a Frobenius-constant quantization. We also demonstrate the corresponding result for the $K$ -theoretic version of the quantum Coulomb branch. At the end of the paper, we investigate what our ideas produce on the categorical level. We find that they yield, after a little fiddling, a construction which corresponds, under the geometric Satake equivalence, to the Frobenius twist functor for representations of the Langlands dual group. We also describe the unfiddled answer, conditional on a conjectural ‘modular derived Satake’, and, though it is more complicated to state, it is in our opinion just as neat and even more compelling.

Cochain level May–Steenrod operations

Steenrod defined in 1947 the Steenrod squares on the mod 2 cohomology of spaces using explicit cochain formulae for the cup-i products; a family of coherent homotopies derived from the broken symmetry of Alexander–Whitney’s chain approximation to the diagonal. He later defined his homonymous operations for all primes using the homology of symmetric groups. This approach enhanced the conceptual understanding of the operations and allowed for many advances, but lacked the concreteness of their definition at the even prime. In recent years, thanks to the development of new applications of cohomology, having definitions of Steenrod operations that can be effectively computed in specific examples has become a key issue. Using the operadic viewpoint of May, this article provides such definitions at all primes introducing multioperations that generalize the Steenrod cup-i products on the simplicial and cubical cochains of spaces.

STEENROD OPERATIONS ON THE DE RHAM COHOMOLOGY OF ALGEBRAIC STACKS

Building upon work of Epstein, May and Drury, we define and investigate the mod p Steenrod operations on the de Rham cohomology of smooth algebraic stacks over a field of characteristic $p>0$ . We then compute the action of the operations on the de Rham cohomology of classifying stacks for finite groups, connected reductive groups for which p is not a torsion prime and (special) orthogonal groups when $p=2$ .

Étale Steenrod operations and the Artin–Tate pairing

We prove a 1966 conjecture of Tate concerning the Artin–Tate pairing on the Brauer group of a surface over a finite field, which is the analog of the Cassels–Tate pairing. Tate asked if this pairing is always alternating and we find an affirmative answer, which is somewhat surprising in view of the work of Poonen–Stoll on the Cassels–Tate pairing. Our method is based on studying a connection between the Artin–Tate pairing and (generalizations of) Steenrod operations in étale cohomology. Inspired by an analogy to the algebraic topology of manifolds, we develop tools allowing us to calculate the relevant étale Steenrod operations in terms of characteristic classes.

Motivic Steenrod operations in characteristic p

For a prime p and a field k of characteristic $p,$ we define Steenrod operations $P^{n}_{k}$ on motivic cohomology with $\mathbb {F}_{p}$ -coefficients of smooth varieties defined over the base field $k.$ We show that $P^{n}_{k}$ is the pth power on $H^{2n,n}(-,\mathbb {F}_{p}) \cong CH^{n}(-)/p$ and prove an instability result for the operations. Restricted to mod p Chow groups, we show that the operations satisfy the expected Adem relations and Cartan formula. Using these new operations, we remove previous restrictions on the characteristic of the base field for Rost’s degree formula. Over a base field of characteristic $2,$ we obtain new results on quadratic forms.

Cohomology Operations

This chapter concerns cohomology operations. Although motivic cohomology was originally defined for smooth varieties over the perfect field 𝑘, it is more useful to view it as a functor defined on the pointed 𝔸1-homotopy category Ho ·, discussed previously in chapter 12. After defining cohomology operations and giving a few examples, the chapter turns to an axiomatic treatment of the motivic Steenrod operations. The motivic Milnor operations are then presented. Thereafter, this chapter demonstrates that the sequence of Milnor operations 𝑄𝑖 is exact on the reduced cohomology of the suspension Σ‎𝔛 attached to a Rost variety 𝑋, using the degree map 𝑡𝒩. It concludes with Voevodsky's motivic degree theorem.

A NOTE ON A-ANNIHILATED GENERATORS OF H*QX

For a path connected space X, the homology algebra $H_*(QX; \mathbb{Z}/2)$ is a polynomial algebra over certain generators QIx. We reinterpret a technical observation, of Curtis and Wellington, on the action of the Steenrod algebra A on the Λ algebra in our terms. We then introduce a partial order on each grading of H*QX which allows us to separate terms in a useful way when computing the action of dual Steenrod operations $Sq^i_*$ on $H_*(QX; \mathbb{Z}/2)$. We use these to completely characterise the A-annihilated generators of this polynomial algebra. We then propose a construction for sequences I so that QIx is A-annihilated. As an application, we offer some results on the form of potential spherical classes in H*QX upon some stability condition under homology suspension. Our computations provide new numerical conditions in the context of hit problem.