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Abstract Cut-and-paste $$K$$-theory has recently emerged as an important variant of higher algebraic $$K$$-theory. However, many of the powerful tools used to study classical higher algebraic $$K$$-theory do not yet have analogues in the cut-and-paste setting. In particular, there does not yet exist a sensible notion of the Dennis trace for cut-and-paste $$K$$-theory. In this paper we address the particular case of the $$K$$-theory of polyhedra, also called scissors congruence $$K$$-theory. We introduce an explicit, computable trace map from the higher scissors congruence groups to group homology, and use this trace to prove the existence of some nonzero classes in the higher scissors congruence groups. We also show that the $$K$$-theory of polyhedra is a homotopy orbit spectrum. This fits into Thomason’s general framework of $$K$$-theory commuting with homotopy colimits, but we give a self-contained proof. We then use this result to re-interpret the trace map as a partial inverse to the map that commutes homotopy orbits with algebraic $$K$$-theory. 

We give an explicit point-set construction of the Dennis trace map from the K-theory of endomorphisms K End(C) to topological Hochschild homology THH(C) for any spectral Waldhausen category C. We describe the necessary technical foundations, most notably a well-behaved model for the spectral category of diagrams in C indexed by an ordinary category via the Moore end. This is applied to define a version of Waldhausen’s S•-construction for spectral Waldhausen categories, which is central to this account of the Dennis trace map. Our goals are both convenience and transparency—we provide all details except for a proof of the additivity theorem for THH, which is taken for granted—and the exposition is concerned not with originality of ideas, but rather aims to provide a useful resource for learning about the Dennis trace and its underlying machinery. 

In this paper we reduce the generalized Hilbert's third problem about Dehn invariants and scissors congruence classes to the injectivity of certain Cheeger–Chern–Simons invariants. We also establish a version of a conjecture of Goncharov relating scissors congruence groups of polytopes and the algebraic K-theory of C.