Cyclic Operads and Cyclic Homology

Abstract

The cyclic homology of associative algebras was introduced by Connes [4] and Tsygan [22] in order to extend the classical theory of the Chern character to the non-commutative setting. Recently, there has been increased interest in more general algebraic structures than associative algebras, characterized by the presence of several algebraic operations. Such structures appear, for example, in homotopy theory [18], [3] and topological field theory [9]. In this paper, we extend the formalism of cyclic homology to this more general framework. This extension is only possible under certain conditions which are best explained using the concept of an operad. In this approach to universal algebra, an algebraic structure is described by giving, for each n ≥ 0, the space P(n) of all n-ary expressions which can be formed from the operations in the given algebraic structure, modulo the universally valid identities. Permuting the arguments of the expressions gives an action of the symmetric group Sn on P(n). The sequence P = {P(n)} of these Sn-modules, together with the natural composition structure on them, is the operad describing our class of algebras. In order to define cyclic homology for algebras over an operad P, it is necessary that P is what we call a cyclic operad: this means that the action of Sn on P(n) extends to an action of Sn+1 in a way compatible with compositions (see Section 2). Cyclic