Universal first-order Massey product of a prefactorization algebra

Abstract

This paper studies the universal first-order Massey product of a prefactorization algebra, which encodes higher algebraic operations on the cohomology. Explicit computations of these structures are carried out in the locally constant case, with applications to factorization envelopes on ${\mathbb{R}}^m$ and a compactification of linear Chern-Simons theory on ${\mathbb{R}}^2\times {\mathbb{S}}^1$.

41 pages; v2: final version to appear in Communications in Mathematical Physics