Browns moduli spaces of curves and the gravity operad

This paper is built on the following observation: the purity of the mixed Hodge structure on the cohomology of Browns moduli spaces is essentially equivalent to the freeness of the dihedral operad underlying the gravity operad. We prove these two facts by relying on both the geometric and the algebraic aspects of the problem: the complete geometric description of the cohomology of Browns moduli spaces and the coradical filtration of cofree cooperads. This gives a conceptual proof of an identity of Bergstrom-Brown which expresses the Betti numbers of Browns moduli spaces via the inversion of a generating series. This also generalizes the Salvatore-Tauraso theorem on the nonsymmetric Lie operad.