\(E_{\infty}\)-monoids with coherent homotopy inverses are Abelian groups (Q1263839): Difference between revisions

Roughly speaking, an \(A_{\infty}\)-monoid is an H-space whose multiplication is coherently homotopy associative with homotopy unit, i.e. the homotopies fit together up to higher homotopies, which in turn fit together up to homotopies, etc. An \(E_{\infty}\)-monoid is in addition coherently homotopy commutative. These structures are interesting because a space is an \(E_{\infty}\)-monoid with homotopy inverse iff it has the homotopy type of an infinite loop space. Although infinite loop spaces appear to have coherent homotopy inverses, these have proved difficult to pin down. In the current note, the authors show that this happens for a very good reason: any \(E_{\infty}\)-monoid with coherent homotopy inverses is weakly equivalent to an abelian topological group. They observe that this explains some calculations of Waldhausen concerning the algebraic K-theory A(X) of a topological space X.