Free decomposition spaces (Q6937009)

The starting point is the recent discovery that objects more general than posets admit the construction of incidence algebras and Möbius inversion: these are called decomposition spaces by \textit{I. Gálvez-Carrillo} et al. [Adv. Math. 331, 952--1015 (2018; Zbl 1403.00023); Adv. Math. 333, 1242--1292 (2018; Zbl 1403.18016)], and they are the same thing as the \(2\)-Segal spaces of \textit{T. Dyckerhoff} and \textit{M. Kapranov} [Higher Segal spaces. Cham: Springer (2019; Zbl 1459.18001)] who were motivated mainly by representation theory and homological algebra.\N\NThe authors introduce the notion of free decomposition spaces: they are simplicial spaces freely generated by inert maps. It is shown that left Kan extension along the inclusion \(j :\triangle_{\text{inert}}\to\triangle\) takes general objects to Möbius decomposition spaces and general maps to CULF maps. Next, an equivalence of \(\infty\)-categories \(\mathbf{ PrSh}(\triangle_{\text{inert}})\simeq \mathbf{Decomp}_{BN}\) is established. Although free decomposition spaces are rather simple objects, they abound in combinatorics: it seems that all comultiplications of deconcatenation type arise from free decomposition spaces. An extensive list of examples, including quasi-symmetric functions is presented.