The nucleus of a compact Lie group, and support of singularity categories

Abstract

In this paper we adapt the notion of the nucleus defined by Benson, Carlson, and Robinson to compact Lie groups in non-modular characteristic. We show that it describes the singularities of the projective scheme of the cohomology of its classifying space. A notion of support for singularity categories of ring spectra (in the sense of Greenlees and Stevenson) is established, and is shown to be precisely the nucleus in this case, consistent with a conjecture of Benson and Greenlees for finite groups.