Homotopy inner products for cyclic operads (Q847574)

The authors introduce the notion of homotopy inner product for any cyclic quadratic Koszul operad, generalizing the construction already known for the associative operad. To do so, a colored operad \(\widehat{\mathcal O}\) for a given cyclic operad \(\mathcal O\) is defined, and then it is shown that if \(\mathcal O\) is cyclic quadratic and Koszul, then so is \(\widehat{\mathcal O}\). As a particularly application of infinite inner products, the authors consider the examples of the associative operad \(\mathcal Assoc\) and the commutative operad \(\mathcal Comm\). It is shown how a homotopy \(\mathcal Comm\)-inner product arises on the chain level of a Poincaré duality space.