General twisting of algebras. (Q881968)

The authors study and generalize a specific notion of twisting (i.e., a deformation of multiplicative structure) for tensor products \(A\otimes B\) of associative algebras \(A\) and \(B\). Such deformations appeared in several contexts in the 1990's, and earlier appeared as `distributive laws'. The generalized constructions introduced in the paper, `braided twistors' and the even more general `pseudotwistors', provide a unified setting to describe (1) the above mentioned twisting of associative algebras, (2) longstanding twisting techniques for bialgebras, and (3) deformations of algebras equipped with Fedosov products. Pseudotwistors can be viewed as analogues of Hopf 2-cycles. The paper concludes with some properties of pseudotwistors, including connections to ribbon algebras and differential algebra.