Topological Hochschild homology and the Bass trace conjecture

We show that the factorization of the Hattori-Stallings rank function through the cyclotomic trace map of Bökstedt-Hsiang-Madsen leads to a restriction of the possible counterexamples to the Bass trace conjecture found earlier by Linnell by different methods. As a new consequence of this restriction, we show that a group G for which every subgroup isomorphic to the additive group of rational numbers has nontrivial and central image in some quotient of G satisfies the Bass trace conjecture.

Lars Hesselholt <larsh@math.nagoya-u.ac.jp>