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Homotopies for Lagrangian field theory

Mathematical Physics 2025-09-17 v2 Differential Geometry math.MP Symplectic Geometry

Abstract

Consider the variational bicomplex for E\mathcal{E} the space of sections of a graded, affine bundle. Local functionals F\mathcal{F} are defined as an equivalence class of density-valued functionals, which represent Lagrangian densities. A choice of a kk-symplectic local form ω\omega on E\mathcal{E} induces a Lie[k][k] algebra structure on (Hamiltonian) local functionals (Fham,{,}ham)(\mathcal{F}_{\mathrm{ham}},\{\cdot,\cdot\}_{\mathrm{ham}}). For any ω\omega and any choice of a cohomological vector field QQ compatible with ω\omega, we build three explicit LL_\infty algebras on a resolution of Fham\mathcal{F}_{\mathrm{ham}}, which are all LL_\infty quasi-isomorphic to a dgL[k][k]a (Fham,dham,{,}ham)(\mathcal{F}_{\mathrm{ham}},d_{\mathrm{ham}},\{\cdot,\cdot\}_{\mathrm{ham}}). In particular, one of our equivalent LL_\infty algebras is a dgL[k][k] algebra. In the case k=1k=-1, this provides an explicit lift of the standard Batalin--Vilkovisky framework to local forms enriched by the LL_\infty structure, in terms of local homotopies, which interprets the modified classical master equation as a Maurer--Cartan equation for the distinguished dgL[k][k]a 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