From local to global deformation quantization of Poisson manifolds (Q1395930)

In [Deformation quantization of Poisson manifolds, I. Preprint, arXiv: q-alg/9709040 (September 1997)], \textit{M. Kontsevich} has given an explicit formula for a star product on \((\mathbb R^d, \alpha)\), where \(\alpha\) denotes a Poisson bivector field. The associativity of this explicitly defined product is obtained as a special case of Kontsevich's formality theorem for the Hochschild complex of multidifferential operators. In the paper under review the authors give a concrete construction of a star product on an arbitrary Poisson manifold \((M,\alpha)\) that it similar in spirit to the Fedosov construction [\textit{B. V. Fedosov}, J. Differ. Geom. 40, 213--238 (1994; Zbl 0812.53034)] in the case of symplectic manifolds \((M,\omega)\). To this end they construct two bundles \(E_0\) and \(E\) of associative algebras, where -- as a bundle -- \(E\) is isomorphic to \(E_0 [[\varepsilon]]\) (here \(\varepsilon\) denotes the formal parameter). \(E_0\) is the bundle of infinite jets of smooth functions on \(M\) which is equipped with the canonical flat connection \(D_0\). The Poisson bivector field gives rise to the structure of a Poisson algebra on each fibre of \(E_0\) and the canonical map \(C^\infty (M) \to E_0\) yields a Poisson algebra isomorphism between \(C^\infty(M)\) and the Poisson algebra of \(D_0\)-flat sections in \(E_0\). The second step in the construction consists in a deformation of this correspondence. Using the Kontsevich formula for \(\mathbb R^d\) each fibre of \(E\) can be equipped with an associative product which is a deformation of the above product on the fibres of \(E_0\) in the direction of the Poisson bracket induced by \(\alpha\). Then analogously to Fedosov's construction the authors construct a compatible connection \(D= D_0+ \varepsilon D_1 + \varepsilon^2 D_2 + \cdots\) which is a deformation of \(D_0\). Here compatibility just means that \(D\) is a derivation with respect to the above product on sections in \(E\) implying that the \(D\)-flat sections form a subalgebra. Moreover, one can achieve that this connection is flat (which in some sense guarantees that there are sufficiently many flat sections) and in this case \(C^\infty(M)[[\varepsilon]]\) turns out to be in bijection to the \(D\)-flat sections in \(E\) (for the proof of existence of \(D\) and for its recursive determination using an adaption of Fedosov's method again special cases of Kontsevich's formality theorem prove to be the crucial tools). Then pulling back the above fibrewise product to \(C^\infty(M)[[\varepsilon]]\) via this isomorphism one obtains a star product on \((M,\alpha)\). Since this isomorphism can be determined recursively the star product can in principle be computed explicitly.