Universal algebraic structures on polyvector fields

The theory of operads is a conceptual framework that has become a kind of universal language, relating branches of topology and algebra. This thesis uses the operadic framework to study the derived algebraic properties of polyvector fields on manifolds.The thesis is divided into eight chapters. The first is an introduction to the thesis and the research field to which it belongs, while the second chapter surveys the basic mathematical results of the field.The third chapter is devoted to a novel construction of differential graded operads, generalizing an earlier construction due to Thomas Willwacher. The construction highlights and explains several categorical properties of differential graded algebras (of some kind) that come equipped with an action by a differential graded Lie algebra. In particular, the construction clarifies the deformation theory of such algebras and explains how such algebras can be twisted by Maurer-Cartan elements.The fourth chapter constructs an explicit strong homotopy deformation of polynomial polyvector fields on affine space, regarded as a two-colored noncommutative Gerstenhaber algebra. It also constructs an explicit strong homotopy quasi-isomorphism from this deformation to the canonical two-colored noncommmutative Gerstenhaber algebra of polydifferential operators on the affine space. This explicit construction generalizes Maxim Kontsevich's formality morphism.The main result of the fifth chapter is that the deformation of polyvector fields constructed in the fourth chapter is (generically) nontrivial and, in a sense, the unique such deformation. The proof is based on some cohomology computations involving Kontsevich's graph complex and related complexes. The chapter ends with an application of the results to properties of a derived version of the Duflo isomorphism.The sixth chapter develops a general mathematical framework for how and when an algebraic structure on the germs at the origin of a sheaf on Cartesian space can be "globalized" to a corresponding algebraic structure on the global sections over an arbitrary smooth manifold. The results are applied to the construction of the fourth chapter, and it is shown that the construction globalizes to polyvector fields and polydifferential operators on an arbitrary smooth manifold.The seventh chapter combines the relations to graph complexes, explained in chapter five, and the globalization theory of chapter six, to uncover a representation of the Grothendieck-Teichmüller gr