Homological reduction of constrained Poisson algebras (Q1359242)

The ``classical BRST construction'', at least as developed by Batalin-Fradkin-Vilkovisky and phrased in terms of constraints, is a homological construction for performing the reduction of the Poisson algebra \(C^\infty(W)\) of smooth functions on a Poisson manifold \(W\) by the ideal \(I\) of functions which vanish on a constraint locus. A set of generators \(\phi_\alpha\) for this ideal are referred to as constraints; Dirac calls the constraints first class if \(I\) is closed under the Poisson bracket and geometers refer to the constraint locus as coisotropic. (If the \(\mathbb{R}\)-linear span of the \(\phi_\alpha\) is closed under the bracket, physicists call the \(\phi_\alpha\) `close' to a Lie algebra; in the more general `open' first class case homological techniques are even more important.) The classical BRST-BFV construction has, in the nice cases, the same cohomology as this complex of longitudinal forms along the leaves of the Hamiltonian foliation. The physicists' model is itself crucially a Poisson algebra extension of a Poisson algebra \(P\) and its differential contains a piece which reinvented the Koszul complex for the ideal \(I\). The differential also contains a piece which looks like the Cartan-Chevalley-Eilenberg differential. The present paper is concerned purely with the relevant homological (Poisson) algebraic structures. I adapt the notion of ``model'' from rational homotopy theory and use the techniques of homological perturbation theory to establish some of basic results explaining the mathematical existence of the classical BRST-BFV construction. Although the usual treatment of BFV is basis dependent (individual constraints) and nominally finite-dimensional, I work more invariantly in terms of the ideal generated by the constraints and take care to avoid assumptions of finite-dimensionality.