Spherical Witt vectors and integral models for spaces

Abstract: We give a new construction of the spherical Witt vector functor of Lurie and Burklund-Schlank-Yuan and extend it to nonconnective objects using synthetic spectra and recent work of Holeman. The spherical Witt vectors are used to build spherical versions of perfect $\lambda$-rings and to motivate new results in Grothendieck's schematization program, building on work of Ekedahl, Kriz, Mandell, Lurie, Quillen, Sullivan, To\"en, and Yuan. In particular, there is an $\infty$-category of perfect derived $\lambda$-rings with trivializations of the Adams operations $\psi^p$ for all $p$ such that the functor sending a space $X$ to its integral cochains on $X$, viewed as such a derived $\lambda$-ring, is fully faithful on a large class of nilpotent spaces. Our theorem is closely related to recent work of Horel and Kubrak-Shuklin-Zakharov. Finally, we answer two questions of Yuan on spherical cochains.