An \(\mathcal{A}_\infty\) operad in spineless cacti (Q892123)

There have been many different approaches to the Deligne conjecture, which states that the Hochschild cochains of an associative algebra has a homotopy Gerstenhaber algebra structure. This paper offers introductory steps toward an approach that would be more concrete than the proofs currently in the literature. The authors make use of the surjection operad \(\mathcal X\) of \textit{C. Berger} and \textit{B. Fresse} [Math. Proc. Camb. Philos. Soc. 137, No. 1, 135--174 (2004; Zbl 1056.55006)], and its second filtration \(F_2 \mathcal X\), shown by \textit{J. E. McClure} and \textit{J. H. Smith} [Contemp. Math. 293, 153--193 (2002; Zbl 1009.18009)] to be equivalent to the Gerstenhaber-Voronov operad \(\mathcal H\), and by \textit{R. M. Kaufmann} [Topology 46, No. 1, 39--88 (2007; Zbl 1140.55008)] to be equivalent to the cellular chains in the operad \(\mathcal C\) of spineless cacti. The main result of this paper is an inductively defined, explicit map from the \(A_\infty\)-operad to this operad. The map is constructed via a homotopy variant of the operad of matching dialgebras. The hope would be that this map could be used to find a direct map from the homotopy Gerstenhaber operad \(\mathcal G_\infty\) to \(\mathcal C\).