On the mod - p cohomology of Out(F_{2(p-1)}

We study the mod-p cohomology of the group Out(F_n) of outer automorphisms of the free group F_n in the case n=2(p-1) which is the smallest n for which the p-rank of this group is 2. For p=3 we give a complete computation, at least above the virtual cohomological dimension of Out(F_4) (which is 5). More precisley, we calculate the equivariant cohomology of the p-singular part of outer space for p=3. For a general prime p>3 we give a recursive description in terms of the mod-p cohomology of Aut(F_k) for k less or equal to p-1. In this case we use the Out(F_{2(p-1)})-equivariant cohomology of the poset of elementary abelian p-subgroups of Out(F_n).

The homotopy of the K(2)-local Moore spectrum at the prime 3 revisited

In this paper we use the approach introduced in an earlier paper by Goerss, Henn, Mahowald and Rezk in order to analyze the homotopy groups of L_{K(2)}V(0), the mod-3 Moore spectrum V(0) localized with respect to Morava K-theory K(2). These homotopy groups have already been calculated by Shimomura. The results are very complicated so that an independent verification via an alternative approach is of interest. In fact, we end up with a result which is more precise and also differs in some of its details from that of Shimomura. An additional bonus of our approach is that it breaks up the result into smaller and more digestible chunks which are related to the K(2)-localization of the spectrum TMF of topological modular forms and related spectra. Even more, the Adams-Novikov differentials for L_{K(2)}V(0) can be read off from those for TMF.