Simplicial monoids and Segal categories
Much research has been done on structures equivalent to topological or simplicial groups. In this paper, we consider instead simplicial monoids. In particular, we show that the usual model category structure on the category of simplicial monoids is Quillen equivalent to an appropriate model category structure on the category of simplicial spaces with a single point in degree zero. In this second model structure, the fibrant objects are reduced Segal categories. We then generalize the proof to relate simplicial categories with a fixed object set to Segal categories with the same fixed set in degree zero.