Deformation quantization of Poisson manifolds (Q1875688)

The author proves that any finite-dimensional Poisson manifold can be canonically quantized in the sense of deformation quantization. The solution presented here uses in an essential way some ideas of string theory. The author's formulas can be viewed as a perturbation series for a topological 2-dimensional quantum field theory coupled with gravity. This important article circulated since 1997 as a frequently cited preprint (q-alg/9709040).