\(\infty\)-operads as symmetric monoidal \(\infty\)-categories (Q6146760)

Lurie [\url{https://people.math.harvard.edu/~lurie/papers/HA.pdf}, \S 2.2.4] established an adjunction \[ \mathrm{Opd}_{\infty}\overset{\mathrm{Env}}{\underset{U}{\rightleftarrows}}\mathrm{SMCat}_{\infty} \] where \(\mathrm{Opd}_{\infty}\)\ is the \(\infty\)-category of \(\infty\)-operads, \(\mathrm{SMCat}_{\infty}\)\ is that of symmetric monoidal \(\infty\)-categories, and the left adjoint \(\mathrm{Env}\)\ is given by an explicit construction, the \textit{symmetric monoidal envelope} of an \(\infty\)-operad. This paper exploits this adjunction to establish new conceptually simple characterizations of \(\infty\)-operads, leading to an easy proof of the equivalence between Lurie's [\url{https://people.math.harvard.edu/~lurie/papers/HA.pdf}] and \textit{C. Barwick}'s [Geom. Topol. 22, No. 4, 1893--1959 (2018; Zbl 1391.18011)] notions of \(\infty \)-operads. The authors give two new descriptions of \(\infty\)-operads as certain symmetric monoidal \(\infty\)-categories whose underlying symmetric monoidal \(\infty\)-groupoids are free and as certain symmetric monoidal \(\infty\)-categories rigged out in a symmetric monoidal functor to finite sets. The latter leads to a third description of \(\infty\)-operads as a localization of a presheaf \(\infty\)-category, which is exploited to give a simple proof of the above equivalence between Lurie's and Barwick's models for \(\infty\)-operads.