Derived Koszul duality and TQ-homology completion of structured ring spectra

Michael Ching, John E. Harper

Published 2015-02-24, updated 2015-04-10Version 2

Working in the context of symmetric spectra, we consider any higher algebraic structures that can be described as algebras over an operad O. We prove that the fundamental adjunction comparing O-algebra spectra with coalgebra spectra over the associated comonad K, via topological Quillen homology (or TQ-homology), can be turned into an equivalence of homotopy theories by replacing O-algebras with the full subcategory of 0-connected O-algebras. This resolves in the affirmative the 0-connected case of a conjecture of Francis-Gaitsgory. This derived Koszul duality result can be thought of as the spectral algebra analog of the fundamental work of Quillen and Sullivan on the rational homotopy theory of spaces, and the subsequent p-adic and integral work of Goerss and Mandell on cochains and homotopy type---the following are corollaries of our main result: (i) 0-connected O-algebra spectra are weakly equivalent if and only if their TQ-homology spectra are weakly equivalent as derived K-coalgebras, and (ii) if a K-coalgebra spectrum is 0-connected and cofibrant, then it comes from the TQ-homology spectrum of an O-algebra. We construct the spectral algebra analog of the unstable Adams spectral sequence that starts from the TQ-homology groups TQ_*(X) of an O-algebra X, and prove that it converges strongly to pi_*(X) when X is 0-connected.