Algebraic K-Theory of infinity-Operads

Thomas Nikolaus

Published 2013-03-09, updated 2014-09-03Version 2

The theory of dendroidal sets has been developed to serve as a combinatorial model for homotopy coherent operads by Moerdijk and Weiss. An infinity-operad is a dendroidal set D satisfying certain lifting conditions. In this paper we give a definition of K-groups K_n(D) for a dendroidal set D. These groups generalize the K-theory of symmetric monoidal (resp. permutative) categories and algebraic K-theory of rings. We establish some useful properties like invariance under the appropriate equivalences and long exact sequences which allow us to compute these groups in some examples. We show that the K-theory groups of D can be realized as homotopy groups of a K-theory spectrum K(D).