Homotopy theory of algebraic quantum field theories

Motivated by gauge theory, we develop a general framework for chain complex-valued algebraic quantum field theories. Building upon our recent operadic approach to this subject, we show that the category of such theories carries a canonical model structure and explain the important conceptual and also practical consequences of this result. As a concrete application, we provide a derived version of Fredenhagen’s universal algebra construction, which is relevant e.g. for the BRST/BV formalism. We further develop a homotopy theoretical generalization of algebraic quantum field theory with a particular focus on the homotopy-coherent Einstein causality axiom. We provide examples of such homotopy-coherent theories via (1) smooth normalized cochain algebras on ∞\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\infty $$\end{document}-stacks, and (2) fiber-wise groupoid cohomology of a category fibered in groupoids with coefficients in a strict quantum field theory.