Reflexive homology is the homology theory associated to the reflexive crossed simplicial group; one of the fundamental crossed simplicial groups. It is the most general way to extend Hochschild homology to detect an order-reversing involution. In this paper we study the relationship between reflexive homology and the $C_2$-equivariant homology of free loop spaces. We define reflexive homology in terms of functor homology. We give a bicomplex for computing reflexive homology together with some calculations, including the reflexive homology of a tensor algebra. We prove that the reflexive homology of a group algebra is isomorphic to the homology of the $C_2$-equivariant Borel construction on the free loop space of the classifying space. We give a direct sum decomposition of the reflexive homology of a group algebra indexed by conjugacy classes of group elements, where the summands are defined in terms of a reflexive analogue of group homology. We define a hyperhomology version of reflexive homology and use it to study the $C_2$-equivariant homology of certain free loop and free loop-suspension spaces. We show that reflexive homology satisfies Morita invariance. We prove that under nice conditions the involutive Hochschild homology studied by Braun and by Fernàndez-València and Giansiracusa coincides with reflexive homology.

We study the $E_2$-algebra $\Lambda \mathfrak {M}_{*,1}:= \coprod _{g\geqslant 0}\Lambda \mathfrak {M}_{g,1}$ consisting of free loop spaces of moduli spaces of Riemann surfaces with one parametrised boundary component, and compute the homotopy type of the group completion $\Omega B\Lambda \mathfrak {M}_{*,1}$: it is the product of $\Omega ^{\infty }\mathbf {MTSO}(2)$ with a certain free $\Omega ^{\infty }$-space depending on the family of all boundary-irreducible mapping classes in all mapping class groups $\Gamma _{g,n}$ with $g\geqslant 0$ and $n\geqslant 1$.

The circle transfer $Q\Sigma (LX_{hS^1})_+ \to QLX_+$ has appeared in several contexts in topology. In this note, we observe that this map admits a geometric re-interpretation as a morphism of cobordism categories of 0-manifolds and 1-cobordisms. Let 𝒞1(X) denote the one-dimensional cobordism category and let Circ(X) ⊂ 𝒞1(X) denote the subcategory whose objects are disjoint unions of unparametrized circles. Multiplication in S1 induces a functor Circ(X) → Circ(LX), and the composition of this functor with the inclusion of Circ(LX) into 𝒞1(LX) is homotopic to the circle transfer. As a corollary, we describe the inclusion of the subcategory of cylinders into the two-dimensional cobordism category 𝒞2(X) and find that it is null-homotopic when X is a point.