Research

The following is a summary of my research output, loosely grouped by theme.

Periodic unstable homotopy theory, spectral Lie algebras, and Goodwillie calculus

This paper proves that vn-periodic unstable homotopy theory is equivalent to the homotopy theory of Lie algebras in T(n)-local spectra, generalizing Quillen's rational homotopy theory.

We prove that the collection of vn-periodic homotopy groups detects homotopy equivalences between simply-connected finite spaces. 

This paper produces a tower of categories interpolating between stable and unstable homotopy theory by introducing the idea of a k-excisive approximation to a (higher) category. It includes various applications, among which a model for the homotopy theory of simply-connected spaces in terms of Tate coalgebras. The results of this paper also produce a description of the "Goodwillie tower" of vn-periodic unstable homotopy theory.

This is a survey describing the use of spectral Lie algebras as models for certain localizations of homotopy theory.

We study the convergence of the Goodwillie tower in vn-periodic homotopy theory. Arone and Mahowald proved that the tower converges for spheres; we demonstrate that this is not the case for wedges of spheres and certain finite spaces of type n (e.g. Moore spaces).

We show that the Bousfield-Kuhn functor exhibits vn-periodic unstable homotopy theory as a theory of algebras for a monad on the category of T(n)-local spectra.

The theory of higher categories and higher operads

We provide a comparison between the partition complex of a finite set A and a certain category of trees with leaves labelled by A. This gives an elementary way to compare different versions of the bar construction of an operad appearing in the literature.

This paper gives a streamlined proof of Lurie's straightening theorem.

A book providing an introduction to the theory of topological/simplicial operads and ∞-operads, using dendroidal sets. We are keeping a list of errata here.

We prove that the homotopy theory of dendroidal Segal spaces is equivalent to that of Barwick's Segal operads. This missing link proves that all models for ∞-operads currently in the literature are equivalent, in particular those of dendroidal sets and Lurie's ∞-operads.

The first paper providing a direct link between the two models in the title. It proves the equivalence of the title for the class of ∞-operads without constants.

For a simplicial category A, we prove that the homotopy colimit functor gives an equivalence of homotopy theories from simplicial diagrams on A to simplicial sets over the nerve of A. This gives a new and quick proof of the straightening-unstraightening equivalence of Lurie.

Gives a very straightforward proof of essentially the same statement as part II above, but in the case of an ordinary category A. The techniques developed here allow for efficient proofs of many useful basic facts in higher category theory, such as homotopy invariance of the covariant model structure, as well as ∞-categorical versions of Quillen's Theorems A and B.

This paper describes a consequence of the more general results of the paper below. It proves that the homotopy theory of dendroidal sets modelling ∞-operads admits a localization (the "covariant model structure") which is Quillen equivalent to that of E-spaces.

Essentially my MSc thesis written at Utrecht University. It extends the theory of left fibrations and coCartesian fibrations from simplicial sets to dendroidal sets. The main result is that the homotopy theory of coCartesian fibrations over an ∞-operad X is equivalent to the homotopy theory of algebras (valued in ∞-categories) over the simplicial operad associated to X.

Miscellaneous

Some basic expository notes on the cotangent complex of a simplicial ring and of a commutative ring spectrum, written for a talk at Oberwolfach.

These are notes from a lecture series by Jacob Lurie at Notre Dame. Ambidexterity is a duality phenomenon which can be exploited to construct generalized forms of Dijkgraaf-Witten topological field theories. These notes focus specifically on ambidexterity in K(n)-local homotopy theory.