Wheeled pro(p)file of Batalin-Vilkovisky formalism

TL;DR

This paper establishes a deep connection between the homotopy theory of unimodular Lie 1-bialgebras and the Batalin-Vilkovisky formalism using wheeled props, enabling new computational methods and extending BF theory to this context.

Contribution

It introduces a wheeled properadic framework linking unimodular Lie 1-bialgebras with BV formalism, and applies this to compute homotopy transfer and quantum corrections.

Findings

Solutions to the quantum master equation correspond to wheeled dg prop representations.

Homotopy transfer formulas are derived using properadic methods.

Feynman integrals in the extended BF theory match homotopy transfer results.

Abstract

Using technique of wheeled props we establish a correspondence between the homotopy theory of unimodular Lie 1-bialgebras and the famous Batalin-Vilkovisky formalism. Solutions of the so called quantum master equation satisfying certain boundary conditions are proven to be in 1-1 correspondence with representations of a wheeled dg prop which, on the one hand, is isomorphic to the cobar construction of the prop of unimodular Lie 1-bialgebras and, on the other hand, is quasi-isomorphic to the dg wheeled prop of unimodular Poisson structures. These results allow us to apply properadic methods for computing formulae for a homotopy transfer of a unimodular Lie 1-bialgebra structure on an arbitrary complex to the associated quantum master function on its cohomology. It is proven that in the category of quantum BV manifolds associated with the homotopy theory of unimodular Lie 1-bialgebras quasi-isomorphisms are equivalence relations. It is shown that Losev-Mnev's BF theory for unimodular Lie algebras can be naturally extended to the case of unimodular Lie 1-bialgebras (and, eventually, to the case of unimodular Poisson structures). Using a finite-dimensional version of the Batalin-Vilkovisky quantization formalism it is rigorously proven that the Feynman integrals computing the effective action of this new BF theory describe precisely homotopy transfer formulae obtained within the wheeled properadic approach to the quantum master equation. Quantum corrections (which are present in our BF model to all orders of the Planck constant) correspond precisely to what are often called "higher Massey products" in the homological algebra.