XXVI Workshop on Geometric Methods in Physics 1-7.07.2007 Main Page First Announcement Travel Participants Registration Photos Email, PGP

# Dmitry Roytenberg

## Weak Lie 2-algebras

A Lie 2-algebra is a linear category equipped with a functorial bilinear operation satisfying skew-symmetry and Jacobi identity up to natural transformations which themselves obey coherence laws of their own. Functors and natural transformations between Lie 2-algebras can also be defined, yielding a 2-category. Passing to the normalized chain complex gives an equivalence of 2-categories between Lie 2-algebras and certain "up to homotopy" structures on the complex; for strictly skew-symmetric Lie 2-algebras these are $L_\infty$-algebras, by a result of Baez and Crans. Lie 2-algebras appear naturally as infinitesimal symmetries of solutions of the Maurer-Cartan equation in some differential graded Lie algebras and $L_\infty$-algebras. In particular, (quasi-) Poisson manifolds, (quasi-) Lie bialgebroids and Courant algebroids provide large classes of examples