Higher Lawvere theories (Q2173857)

One important aspect of homotopical mathematics is the study of homotopy coherent algebras. This can be quite challenging as homotopy coherent structures inherently involve infinite levels of data and thus require an effective theory which allows us to manage the relevant data. One first solution towards managing the data of homotopy coherent algebras is the \textit{theory of operads}, first introduced by May to study infinite loop spaces [\textit{J. P. May}, The geometry of iterated loop spaces. Berlin-Heidelberg-New York: Springer-Verlag (1972; Zbl 0244.55009)]. It was later generalized to \(\infty\)-categories by Lurie [\textit{J. Lurie}, Higher Algebra, \url{http://people.math.harvard.edu/~lurie/papers/HA.pdf}], where it is called the theory of \textit{\(\infty\)-operads}. An alternative approach towards the study of universal algebras was introduced by Lawvere and is hence called \textit{Lawvere theory} [\textit{F. W. Lawvere}, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 50, 869--872 (1963; Zbl 0119.25901)]. Despite the simplicity of its definitions and its applications in category theory, Lawvere theories, unlike operads, were not commonly used to study homotopy coherent algebraic constructions (although there are certain examples, such as [\textit{M. Szymik}, Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 371, No. 8, 5823--5839 (2019; Zbl 1432.55014)] in the context of model categories and [\textit{D. Gepner} et al., Algebr. Geom. Topol. 15, No. 6, 3107--3153 (2015; Zbl 1336.55006)] in the context of \(\infty\)-categories). This paper takes an important step towards a remedy of this situation by systematically studying a theory of \textit{higher Lawvere theories}, which is the \(\infty\)-categorical analogue of Lawvere theories and can thus help us study homotopy coherent algebras in \(\infty\)-categories, similar to \(\infty\)-operads. The paper breaks down into five sections. The first section is a survey of the results. The second and third section include the main result of the paper, whereas the fourth section gives us a nice application. Finally the author applies those results in section five to categories that commonly arise in homotopy theory. More specificially, the key results of the paper are Theorems \(2.10\) and \(3.4\), which characterize the \(\infty\)-category of higher Lawvere theories as a \textit{symmetric monoidal colocalization} of the \(\infty\)-category of \textit{pointed presentable \(\infty\)-categories}. Using this colocalization, the author proves an equivalence between \textit{semiring spaces} and \textit{Lawvere theories representing their module categories} (Proposition \(4.1\)). Finally, the author applies these results about higher Lawvere theories to study \textit{additive \(\infty\)-categories} (Section \(5.1\)) and \textit{genuine \(G\)-spectra} (Section \(5.2\)).