From non-unitary wheeled PROPs to smooth amplitudes and generalised convolutions (Q2097289)

PROPs, which stand for products and permutations, are generalizations of operads that parametrize operations with multiple inputs and multiple outputs but without directed cycles. Wheeled PROPs are generalizations of PROPs that have, furthermore, operations corresponding to loops. In this paper the authors introduce and study a similar structure called TRAP, which stand for trace and permutation. These objects are, roughly speaking, wheeled PROPs without units. For example, continuous morphisms on an infinite-dimensional topological space and smooth kernels on a closed manifold form a TRAP but not a wheeled PROP. The authors construct free TRAPs and show that each TRAP can be completed to a wheeled PROP. Moreover, they show that each TRAP can be equipped with a vertical concatenation that realizes the usual composition on the TRAP of linear homomorphisms of a vector space. For the TRAP of smooth kernels, vertical concatenation are generalized convolutions.