Simultaneous deformations of algebras and morphisms via derived brackets

Abstract

We present a method to construct explicitly L-infinity algebras governing simultaneous deformations of various kinds of algebraic structures and of their morphisms. It is an alternative to the heavy use of the operad machinery of the existing approaches. Our method relies on Voronov's derived bracket construction.Comment: 20 pages. Final version, accepted for publication, and significantly shorter than version v1. Our previous submission arXiv:1202.2896v1 has been divided into two parts. The present paper contains the algebraic applications of the theory, while the geometric applications are the subject of the paper arXiv:1202.2896v2 ("Simultaneous deformations and Poisson geometry"