A local-to-global analysis of Gelfand-Fuks cohomology

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Abstract: We present a novel proof technique to construct the Gelfand-Fuks spectral sequence for diagonal Chevalley-Eilenberg cohomology of vector fields on a smooth manifold, performing a local-to-global analysis through a notion of generalized good covers from the theory of factorization algebras and cosheaves. This approach yields a unified way to deal with the problem of comparing “sheaf-like” data over different Cartesian powers of the manifold, and is easily generalized to the study of other cohomology theories associated to geometric objects. Independently, we lay out a detailed and easily accessible exposition on the continuous Chevalley-Eilenberg cohomology of formal vector fields and of vector fields on Euclidean space, modernizing and elaborating on well-established literature on the subject by Bott, Fuks, and Gelfand.