I keep reading the term "rational (ring-)spectrum" but can't find a definition.
My original motivation for researching this was to understand some basic examples of complex oriented cohomology theories. One of these reads:
Every rational ring spectrum $E$ is complex orientable since we have a morphism $S^0_\mathbb{Q} \simeq H\mathbb{Q} \to E$ (and we know $H\mathbb{Q}$ to be).
Unfortunately I wasn't very rigorous when taking these notes, so I can't reconstruct what $S^0_\mathbb{Q}$ is supposed to be. $H\mathbb{Q}$ is the Eilenberg-Mac Lane spectrum for the rationals.
So can anybody clarify this? What is a rational spectrum and where does the asserted map come from?
I hope this rough answer helps. A rational spectrum is a spectrum whose homotopy groups are rational vector spaces and $S^0_\mathbb Q$ is the localization of the sphere spectrum at the rational homotopy equivalences. Both $E$ and $H\mathbb Q$ are rationally local, and rationalization is smashing. Hence you get unit maps $S^0_\mathbb Q\to E$ and $S^0_\mathbb Q\to H\mathbb Q$ and you can check that the latter is a homotopy equivalence.