AbstractThe H-space that represents Brown–Peterson cohomology BPk(–) was split by the second author into indecomposable factors, which all have torsion-free homotopy and homology. Here, we do the same for the related spectrum P(n), by constructing idempotent operations in P(n)–cohomology P(n)k(–) in the style of Boardman–Johnson–Wilson; this relies heavily on the Ravenel–Wilson determination of the relevant Hopf ring. The resulting (i – 1)-connected H-spaces Yi have free connective Morava K-homology k(n)*(Yi), and may be built from the spaces in the Ω-spectrum for k(n) using only vn-torsion invariants.We also extend Quillen's theorem on complex cobordism to show that for any space X, the P(n)*-module P(n)*(X) is generated by elements of P(n)i(X) for i ≥ 0. This result is essential for the work of Ravenel–Wilson–Yagita, which in many cases allows one to compute BP–cohomology from Morava K-theory.
The Hopf ring for complex cobordism