∞-OPERADS AS SYMMETRIC MONOIDAL ∞-CATEGORIES

Abstract

We use Lurie’s symmetric monoidal envelope functor to give two new descriptions of ∞-operads: as certain symmetric monoidal ∞-categories whose underlying symmetric monoidal ∞-groupoids are free, and as certain symmetric monoidal ∞-categories equipped with a symmetric monoidal functor to finite sets (with disjoint union as tensor product). The latter leads to a third description of ∞-operads, as a localization of a presheaf ∞-category, and we use this to give a simple proof of the equivalence between Lurie’s and Barwick’s models for ∞-operads.