Infinite loop spaces, and coherence for symmetric monoidal bicategories (Q2437493)

Performing an iterative Eckmann-Hilton-like process on monoidal bicategories, one is respectively led to braided, sylleptic and symmetric monoidal bicategories in the terminology of \textit{B. Day} and the reviewer in [Adv. Math. 129, No. 1, 99--157, Art. No. AI971649 (1997; Zbl 0910.18004)]. After that, nothing new: stability. In a recent paper [Adv. Math. 226, No. 5, 4225--4265 (2011; Zbl 1260.18008)], the first author of the present paper proved coherence results for monoidal and braided monoidal bicategories, and looked at the relevance to loop spaces. This new paper proves three coherence results for symmetric monoidal bicategories and relates this to some \(E_n\)-space structures. The coherence results state: (i) in a free symmetric monoidal bicategory on a set, every diagram of 2-cells commutes; (ii) the free symmetric monoidal bicategory on the terminal set is equivalent, as a symmetric monoidal bicategory, to a skeleton of the groupoid of finite sets and bijective functions as a locally discrete symmetric monoidal bicategory; and (iii) any symmetric monoidal bicategory is equivalent, as a symmetric monoidal bicategory, to a strict one. A word of warning here: the word `strict' in (iii) does not mean the most extreme notion of strict symmetry; the braiding is not required to be an identity, merely an adjoint equivalence with the syllepsis as unit. The third result is not a corollary of the earlier ones but does use the same proof techniques involving rewriting and positive braids. If \(\mathcal{A}\) is the hom weak \(n\)-category of a one-object weak \((n+1)\)-category \(\Sigma \mathcal{A}\) then we have the mnemonic that the simplicial nerve of \(\Sigma \mathcal{A}\) is essentially homotopic to the suspension of the simplicial nerve of \(\mathcal{A}\). That is, nerve weakly commutes with suspension. In particular, the nerve of a monoidal category is essentially a loop space. For a sylleptic monoidal bicategory \(\mathcal{A}\), we have the weak 5-category \(\Sigma^3\mathcal{A}\), so that the simplicial nerve of bicategory \(\mathcal{A}\) is expected to be a 3-fold loop space. The present paper uses its coherence theorems to properly prove, consistent with the mnemonic, that the fundamental 2-groupoid of an \(E_3\)-space has a sylleptic monoidal structure. The authors provide the classifying space of a symmetric monoidal bicategory with an \(E_{\infty}\)-structure. Also reflecting the stability mentioned above, for \(n\geq 4\), they equip the fundamental 2-groupoid of an \(E_n\)-space with a symmetric monoidal structure.