We study the Balmer spectrum of the category of finite $G$-spectra for a compact Lie group $G$, extending the work for finite $G$ by Strickland, Balmer–Sanders, Barthel–Hausmann–Naumann–Nikolaus–Noel–Stapleton and others. We give a description of the underlying set of the spectrum and show that the Balmer topology is completely determined by the inclusions between the prime ideals and the topology on the space of closed subgroups of $G$. Using this, we obtain a complete description of this topology for all abelian compact Lie groups and consequently a complete classification of thick tensor ideals. For general compact Lie groups we obtain such a classification away from a finite set of primes $p$.

Let $G$ be a compact Lie group, and let $\pi$ be any prime or set of primes. A ‘$\pi$-perfection map’ is constructed: that is, a continuous function from the space of conjugacy classes of all closed subgroups of $G$ to the space of conjugacy classes of $\pi$-perfect subgroups with finite index in their normalizer. This is used to show that the idempotent elements of the Burnside ring of $G$ localized at $\pi$ are in bijective correspondence with the open and closed subsets of the space of conjugacy classes of $\pi$-perfect subgroups of $G$ with finite index in their normalizer.