Deformation theory of cohomological field theories

Abstract

Abstract We develop the deformation theory of cohomological field theories (in short, CohFTs), which is done as a special case of a general deformation theory of morphisms of modular operads. This leads us to introduce two new natural extensions of the notion of a CohFT: homotopy (necessary algebraic toolkit to develop chain-level Gromov–Witten invariants) and quantum (with examples found in the works of Buryak and Rossi on integrable systems). The universal group of symmetries of morphisms of modular operads, based on Kontsevich’s graph complex, is shown to be trivial. Using the tautological rings on moduli spaces of curves, we introduce a natural enrichment of Kontsevich’s graph complex. This leads to universal groups of non-trivial symmetries of both homotopy and quantum CohFTs, which, in the latter case, is shown to contain both the prounipotent Grothendieck–Teichmüller group and the Givental group.