I mean what the multiplication law of the tensor product is.
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The correct setting for differential graded vectors spaces is as follows. Recall first the category of $\mathbb Z$-graded vector spaces. As a category this consists of functors from the set $\mathbb Z$ (thought of as a category with no morphisms) to $\operatorname{Vect}$, i.e. objects consist are sequences of vector spaces, and morphisms are sequences of linear maps. (There are variations: one can insist that the vector spaces be trivial except for finitely many of them, for example, and that the non-trivial vector spaces be finite-dimensional.) As a monoidal category, the tensor structure adds degree. Only when you introduce the braiding does the category become interesting: we will take the "Koszul" braiding, so that classically odd-degree terms "anticommute". This braiding is symmetric. Within the symmetric monoidal category $\mathbb Z\text{-Vect}$ of $\mathbb Z$-graded vector spaces there is a special Lie algebra, which is the unique (necessarily commutative) Lie algebra structure on the $\mathbb Z$-graded vector space with one dimension in degree $1$ and all other degrees trivial. (The only bracket is the $0$ one because, by construction, the bracket must add degree, and so must land in the degree-two part, which is zero-dimensional.) Suggestively calling this Lie algebra Let Given two algebras This categorical mumbo-jumbo exactly recovers the multiplication that you are looking for. I hope also that it illustrates that it is very naturally part of a larger story, and does not come out of the blue. |
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