Two-dimensional topological gravity and equivariant cohomology (Q1330947)

The first part of the paper makes precise the analogy between topological string theory and equivariant cohomology for differentiable actions of the circle group on manifolds. It is shown that topological string theory is the ``derived functor'' of semi-relative cohomology, just as equivariant cohomology is the derived functor of basic cohomology. The second part describes an algebraic structure on the equivariant cohomology of a topological conformal field theory that is analogous to the Batalin-Vilkovisky algebra that was shown to be associated with the basic cohomology of the same type of theory by the same author. That algebraic structure, called a gravity algebra, is a certain generalization of a Lie algebra with an infinite sequence of operations satisfying quadratic relations generalizing the Jacobi rule.