The long hunt for a symmetric monoidal category of spectra finally ended
in success with the simultaneous discovery of the third author's
discovery of symmetric spectra and the Elmendorf-Kriz-Mandell-May
category of S-modules. In this paper we define and study the
model category of symmetric spectra, based on simplicial sets and
topological spaces. We prove that the category of symmetric spectra is
closed symmetric monoidal and that the symmetric monoidal structure is
compatible with the model structure. We prove that the model category
of symmetric spectra is Quillen equivalent to Bousfield and
Friedlander's category of spectra. We show that the monoidal axiom
holds, so that we get model categories of ring spectra and modules over
a given ring spectrum.
This version has been supplanted by 0265.