Multivariable cochain operations and little n-cubes
James E. McClure, Jeffrey H. Smith · arXiv (Cornell University) · 2001
This is a revision of a paper first posted June 4, 2001. It will appear in the Journal of the AMS. In this paper we construct a small $E_\infty$ chain operad $§$ which acts naturally on the normalized cochains $S^*X$ of a topological space. We also construct, for each $n$, a suboperad $§_n$ which is quasi-isomorphic to the normalized singular chains of the little $n$-cubes operad. The case $n=2$ leads to a substantial simplification of our earlier proof of Deligne's Hochschild cohomology conjecture.