2 SHUBHODIP MONDAL AND EMANUEL REINECKE
Let us briefly explain the main ingredients in the proof of Theorem A. Let
X
be a replete topos. We
need to prove that any tower in
Shv∞
(
X
)
∧
which “looks like” a Postnikov tower is in fact a Postnikov
tower (see Lemma 3.7). As explained in detail in the proof of Theorem A, this follows more or less
directly from Milnor sequences, which allow one to calculate homotopy groups of an N-indexed inverse
limit in the expected way.
However, it is quite subtle to have a theory of Milnor sequences in general since sheafification does
not commute with infinite limits (see [
To¨e06
, p. 21] and Remark 3.23). In fact, it is already unclear if
π0
commutes with N-indexed direct products in
Shv∞
(
X
). Let us consider the example arising from
condensed mathematics when
X
is the pro-´etale site of a point [
Sch19
, Def. 1.2]. In that case, one
can get around this issue by realizing that a sheaf is essentially the same as a presheaf on extremally
disconnected sets that sends finite disjoint unions to products [
Sch19
, Prop. 2.7]. Roughly speaking,
presheaves on the pro-´etale site of a point that send coproducts to products are essentially as good as
sheaves.
Motivated by this property, for a general replete topos we work with a class of abstract presheaves
called multiplicative presheaves (see Definition 2.5), which send arbitrary disjoint unions to products.
We observe in Proposition 2.14 that sheafification commutes with N-indexed products of multiplicative
presheaves, overcoming the subtleties discussed above and leading to the existence of Milnor sequences
(see Proposition 3.22).
Remark 1.4. Let
X
be a replete topos. One might wonder whether
Shv∞
(
X
) is automatically
hypercomplete. In Example 3.29, we show that this is false even if one assumes
X
to be locally weakly
contractible. This also implies that
Shv∞
(
X
) is not Postnikov complete in general (see Remark 3.16).
Example 1.5. Many topoi naturally appearing in algebraic geometry are replete. Theorem A is
applicable in all such contexts, without having to make any assumptions on the finiteness of homotopy
or cohomological dimension. For instance (after fixing set-theoretic issues, see e.g. the footnote in
[
BS15
, Ex. 3.1.7]), topoi coming from the fpqc-topology,
v
-topology (see e.g. [
SP22
, Tag 0EVM]), and
the quasisyntomic topology [
BMS19
, Def. 4.10] are all replete, but in general not of finite cohomological
or homotopy dimension: as a concrete example, arc-descent for the ´etale cohomology of torsion sheaves
[BM21, Thm. 5.4] shows that
H∗(Spec(R)fpqc,Z/2) ≃H∗(Spec(R)v,Z/2) ≃H∗(Spec(R)´et,Z/2).
The latter is computed by the group cohomology ring
H∗
(Z
/
2
,
Z
/
2), which is a symmetric algebra on
H1
(Z
/
2
,
Z
/
2) and thus nontrivial in all degrees (cf. Example 3.17). On the other hand, smaller topoi
whose covers are subject to certain finiteness conditions (such as Zariski, ´etale, fppf) tend to be not
replete (cf. [BS15, Ex. 3.1.5]).
Example 1.6 ([
BS15
,§4.3]).Let
G
be a profinite group. Let (
BG
)
pro´et
denote the site of profinite
sets with a continuous
G
-action, with covers given by continuous surjections. Then
Shv
(
BG
)
pro´et
is replete. As a special case of Theorem A,
Shv∞
(
BG
)
pro´et∧
is Postnikov complete. However,
this fails for non-replete variants of this topos that do not take the profinite topology into account;
cf. Example 3.17.
To exhibit another consequence of Theorem A, let us mention the following application to affine
stacks in the sense of [To¨e06, §2.2].
Corollary 1.7 (Corollary 3.28).Let
F
be an affine stack over
Spec B
for any ring
B
. Then the
natural map F→limnτ≤nFis an equivalence.
Previously, the above corollary was only known under certain assumptions (Remark 3.27) and the
proof relied on the vanishing of cohomology groups of affine schemes with coefficients in unipotent
group schemes in degrees
>
1. As we see now, a more general result follows from Theorem A simply as
a consequence of repleteness. The Milnor sequences for replete topoi that appears in this paper will
also be used in [MR23].