We propose topological Hochschild homology as a tool for measuring ramification of maps of structured ring spectra. We determine second order topological Hochschild homology of the p-local integers. For the tamely ramified extension of the map from the connective Adams summand to p-local complex topological K-theory we determine the relative topological Hochschild homology and show that it detects the tame ramification of this extension. We show that the complexification map from connective topological real to complex K-theory shows features of a wildly ramified extension. We also determine relative topological Hochschild homology for some quotient maps with commutative quotients.

We consider the algebraic K-theory of a truncated polynomial algebra in several commuting variables, . This naturally leads to a new generalization of the big Witt vectors. If k is a perfect field of positive characteristic we describe the K-theory computation in terms of a cube of these Witt vectors on ℕn. If the characteristic of k does not divide any of the ai we compute the K-groups explicitly. We also compute the K-groups modulo torsion for k = ℤ.

To understand this K-theory spectrum we use the cyclotomic trace map to topological cyclic homology, and write as the iterated homotopy cofiber of an n-cube of spectra, each of which is easier to understand.

In this paper we extend the computation of the the typical curves of algebraic K-theory done by Lars Hesselholt and Ib Madsen to general tensor algebras. The models used allow us to determine the stages of the Taylor tower of algebraic K-theory as a functor of augmented algebras, as defined by Tom Goodwillie, when evaluated on derived tensor algebras.

For R a discrete ring, and M a simplicial R-bimodule, we let R(M) denote the (derived) tensor algebra of M over R, and πR denote the ring of formal (derived) power series in M over R. We define a natural transformation of functors of simplicial R-bimodules Φ: which is closely related to Waldhausen's equivalence We show that Φ induces an equivalence on any finite stage of Goodwillie's Taylor towers of the functors at any simplicial bimodule. This is used to show that there is an equivalence of functors , and for connected bimodules, also an equivalence