Operads on graphs: extending the pre-Lie operad and general construction

Abstract: The overall aim of this paper is to define a structure of graph operads, thus generalizing the celebrated pre-Lie operad on rooted trees. More precisely, we define two operads on multigraphs, and exhibit a non trivial link between them and the pre-Lie and Kontsevich- Willwacher operads. We study one of these operads in more detail. While its structure is too involved to exhibit a description by generators and relations, we show that it has interesting finitely generated sub-operads, with links with the commutative and the magmatic commutative operads. In particular, one of them is Koszul and this allows us to compute its Koszul dual. Finally, we introduce a new framework on species and operads and a general way to define operads on multigraphs.