Operads in Algebra, Topology and Physics (Hardcover)

Operads are mathematical devices which describe algebraic structures of many varieties and in various categories. Operads are particularly important in categories with a good notion of "homotopy" where they play a key role in organizing hierarchies of higher homotopies. Significant examples first appeared in the 1960s, though the formal definition and appropriate generality waited until a decade later. These early occurrences were in algebraic topology in the study of (iterated) loop spaces and their chain algebras In the 1990s, there was a renaissance and further development of the theory inspired by the discovery of new relationships with graph cohomology, representation theory, algebraic geometry, derived categories, Morse theory, symplectic and contact geometry, combinatorics, knot theory, moduli spaces, cyclic cohomology, and, not least, theoretical physics, especially string field theory and deformation quantization.