Abstract. We give a quantum field theory interpretation of Kontsevich's deformation quantization formula for Poisson manifolds. We show that it is given by the perturbative expansion of the path integral of a simple topological bosonic open string theory. Its Batalin-Vilkovisky quantization yields a superconformal field theory. The associativity of the star product, and more generally the formality conjecture can then be understood by field theory methods. As an application, we compute the center of the deformed algebra in terms of the center of the Poisson algebra.

Abstract. This paper introduces a general perturbative quantization scheme for gauge theories on manifolds with boundary, compatible with cutting and gluing, in the cohomological symplectic (BV-BFV) formalism. Explicit examples, like abelian BF theory and its perturbations, including nontopological ones, are presented.

In this paper we extend the classical BV framework to gauge theories on spacetime manifolds with boundary. In particular, we connect the BV construction in the bulk with the BFV construction on the boundary and we develop its extension to strata of higher codimension in the case of manifolds with corners. We present several examples including electrodynamics, Yang-Mills theory and topological field theories coming from the AKSZ construction, in particular, the Chern-Simons theory, the BF theory, and the Poisson sigma model. This paper is the first step towards developing the perturbative quantization of such theories on manifolds with boundary in a way consistent with gluing.

We prove a relative version of Kontsevich's formality theorem. This theorem involves a manifold M and a submanifold C and reduces to Kontsevich's theorem if C=M. It states that the DGLA of multivector fields on an infinitesimal neighbourhood of C is L-infinity-quasiisomorphic to the DGLA of multidifferential operators acting on sections of the exterior algebra of the conormal bundle. Applications to the deformation quantisation of coisotropic submanifolds are given. The proof uses a duality transformation to reduce the theorem to a version of Kontsevich's theorem for supermanifolds, which we also discuss. In physical language, the result states that there is a duality between the Poisson sigma model on a manifold with a D-brane and the Poisson sigma model on a supermanifold without branes (or, more properly, with a brane which extends over the whole supermanifold).Comment: 31 pages. Details on globalization adde

ABSTRACT. We consider the Poisson sigma model associated to a Poisson manifold. The perturbative quantization of this model yields the Kontsevich star product formula. We study here the classical model in the Hamiltonian formalism. The phase space is the space of leaves of a Hamiltonian foliation and has a natural groupoid structure. If it is a manifold then it is a symplectic groupoid for the given Poisson manifold. We study various families of examples. In particular, a global symplectic groupoid for a general class of two-dimensional Poisson domains is constructed.