Involutive \(A_\infty\)-algebras and dihedral cohomology. (Q2255544)

This article presents a synthesis of two previous constructions which generalizes both of them, namely (1) Hochschild and cyclic cohomology in the \(A_\infty\)-setting and (2) Loday's dihedral cohomology for involutive associative algebras. To be specific, this paper shows that the Hochschild and cyclic cohomology complexes of an \(A_\infty\)-algebra equipped with an involution split naturally into two summands (``positive'' and ``negative''). In the cyclic case assume that the \(A_\infty\)-algebra is cyclic. Then the original complex is a differential graded Lie algebra and the positive summand is a subalgebra. This positive summand is the \textit{dihedral cohomology complex}. Then the Maurer-Cartan functor for the dihedral cohomology complex, viewed as a differential graded Lie algebra coincides with the functor of deformations for the (cyclic) \(A_\infty\)-algebra which respect the involution. This construction fits into a large body of literature describing the deformations of algebraic structures that are appropriate to consider in some setting in terms of a cohomology theory for such algebraic structures. The class of involutive \(A_\infty\)-algebras was employed by the author in previous work. In the final section, generalizations to other operads are considered. An involutive or Möbius algebra over an operad \(\mathcal P\) is defined to be an algebra over \(\mathcal P\) equipped with an involution \(*\) such that for \(m\in\mathcal P(n)\), we have \[ (m(a_1,\ldots,a_n))^*=m(a_n^*,\ldots,a_1^*). \] It is shown that a similar decomposition theorem holds for the appropriate cohomology theory, although the relationship to deformation theory is not discussed. It would have been nice if the approach taken in this section were more general. That is, one can imagine equipping the \textit{operad} with an involution with appropriate properties \(m\mapsto m^*\) and proceeding as in this section, replacing the equation above with \[ (m(a_1,\ldots,a_n))^*=m^*(a_1^*,\ldots,a_n^*). \] This would include the skew-involutive Lie algebras considered by the author in Section 2 and operads with a trivial involution as well as the Möbius examples considered here.