KONTSEVICH'S UNIVERSAL FORMULA FOR DEFORMATION QUANTIZATION AND THE CAMPBELL–BAKER–HAUSDORFF FORMULA

Abstract

We relate a universal formula for the deformation quantization of Poisson structures (⋆-products) on ℝ^d proposed by Maxim Kontsevich to the Campbell–Baker–Hausdorff (CBH) formula. We show that Kontsevich's formula can be viewed as exp (P) where P is a bi-differential operator that is a deformation of the given Poisson structure. For linear Poisson structures (duals of Lie algebras) his product takes the form exp (C+L) where exp (C) is the ⋆-product given by the universal enveloping algebra via symmetrization, essentially the CBH formula. This is established by showing that the two products are identical on duals of nilpotent Lie algebras where the operator L vanishes. This completely determines part of Kontsevich's formula and leads to a new scheme for computing the CBH formula. The main tool is a graphical analysis for bi-differential operators and the computation of certain iterated integrals that yield the Bernoulli numbers.