Barcelona Conference on Higher Structures @ Universitat de Barcelona, Centre de Recerca Matemàtica

Title
Formality and non-formality of Swiss-Cheese operads and variants
Event
Barcelona Conference on Higher Structures
Location
Universitat de Barcelona, Centre de Recerca Matemàtica
On
Event
https://sites.google.com/view/bchs-2021/home
Slides
https://onedrive.live.com/embed?cid=98107CE77FEFCA7B&resid=98107CE77FEFCA7B%2196599&authkey=AA6jZESvpHo_wzQ&em=2&wdAr=1.7777777777777777

Abstract

Configuration spaces consist in ordered collections of points in a given ambient manifold. Kontsevich and Tamarkin proved that the configuration spaces of Euclidean n-spaces are rationally formal, i.e., that their rational homotopy type is completely encoded by their cohomology. Their proofs use ideas from the theory of operads, and they prove the stronger result that the operads associated to configuration spaces of Euclidean nn-spaces, called the little nn-cubes operads and denoted EnE_n, are formal.

Voronov’s Swiss-Cheese operads encode the action of an EnE_n-algebra on an En1E_{n-1}-algebra. Livernet and Willwacher proved that an enlarged version of this operad which encodes morphisms (rather than actions) is not formal. In this talk, I will explain why a higher codimensional version of the Swiss-Cheese operad, which encodes a central derivation from an EmE_m-algebra to an EnE_n-algebra, is formal for nm2n - m \geq 2. Moreover, I will sketch a proof of why Voronov’s original version of the codimension one Swiss-Cheese operad is non-formal (in joint work with R. V. Vieira).