Homotopies for Lagrangian field theory
Abstract
Consider the variational bicomplex for the space of sections of a graded, affine bundle. Local functionals are defined as an equivalence class of density-valued functionals, which represent Lagrangian densities. A choice of a -symplectic local form on induces a Lie algebra structure on (Hamiltonian) local functionals . For any and any choice of a cohomological vector field compatible with , we build three explicit algebras on a resolution of , which are all quasi-isomorphic to a dgLa . In particular, one of our equivalent algebras is a dgL algebra. In the case , this provides an explicit lift of the standard Batalin--Vilkovisky framework to local forms enriched by the structure, in terms of local homotopies, which interprets the modified classical master equation as a Maurer--Cartan equation for the distinguished dgLa we construct. We further provide a multisymplectic interpretation of the resulting data.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2508.00133,
title = {Homotopies for Lagrangian field theory},
author = {Michele Schiavina and Jonas Schnitzer},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.00133},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
Significant improvements; 34 pages