We give a popular introduction to formality theorems for Hochschild complexes and their applications. We review some of the recent results and prove that the truncated Hochschild cochain complex of a polynomial algebra is non-formal.
The Kontsevich-Soibelman solution of the cyclic version of Delignes conjecture and the formality of the operad of little discs on a cylinder provide us with a natural homotopy calculus structure on the pair (C^*(A), C_*(A)) ``Hochschild cochains + Hochschild chains of an associative algebra A. We show that for an arbitrary smooth algebraic variety X with the structure sheaf O_X the sheaf (C^*(O_X), C_*(O_X)) of homotopy calculi is formal. This result was announced in paper [29] by the second and the third author.
We prove the formality theorem for the differential graded Lie algebra module of Hochschild chains for the algebra of endomorphisms of a smooth vector bundle. We discuss a possible application of this result to a version of the algebraic index theorem for Poisson manifolds.
A first goal of this paper is to precisely relate the homotopy theories of bialgebras and $E_2$-algebras. For this, we construct a conservative and fully faithful $infty$-functor from pointed conilpotent homotopy bialgebras to augmented $E_2$-algebras which consists in an appropriate cobar construction. Then we prove that the (derived) formal moduli problem of homotopy bialgebras structures on a bialgebra is equivalent to the (derived) formal moduli problem of $E_2$-algebra structures on this cobar construction. We show consequently that the $E_3$-algebra structure on the higher Hochschild complex of this cobar construction, given by the solution to the higher Deligne conjecture, controls the deformation theory of this bialgebra. This implies the existence of an $E_3$-structure on the deformation complex of a dg bialgebra, solving a long-standing conjecture of Gerstenhaber-Schack. On this basis we solve a long-standing conjecture of Kontsevich, by proving the $E_3$-formality of the deformation complex of the symmetric bialgebra. This provides as a corollary a new proof of Etingof-Kazdhan deformation quantization of Lie bialgebras which extends to homotopy dg Lie bialgebras and is independent from the choice of an associator. Along the way, we establish new general results of independent interest about the deformation theory of algebraic structures, which shed a new light on various deformation complexes and cohomology theories studied in the literature.
This paper is based on the authors paper Koszul duality in deformation quantization, I, with some improvements. In particular, an Introduction is added, and the convergence of the spectral sequence in Lemma 2.1 is rigorously proven. Some informal discussion in Section 1.5 is added.