The zeroth stable homotopy groups of motivic spheres over the integers

Abstract: The main result determines the zeroth integral Milnor-Witt stem of the motivic sphere spectrum in the Morel-Voevodsky motivic stable homotopy category of the integers. The component in weight zero is the Grothendieck-Witt ring of nondegenerate symmetric bilinear forms over the integers. Along the way, cellularity of various motivic spectra, including the integral motivic Eilenberg-MacLane spectrum, is established over arbitrary fields, as well as an absolute purity result for the η-inverted motivic sphere spectrum over Dedekind domains of mixed characteristic.