Cohomologies, extensions and deformations of differential algebras with any weights

Abstract: As an algebraic study of differential equations, differential algebras have been studied for a century and and become an important area of mathematics. In recent years the area has been expended to the noncommutative associative and Lie algebra contexts and to the case when the operator identity has a weight in order to include difference operators and difference algebras. This paper provides a cohomology theory for differential algebras of any weights. This gives a uniform approach to both the zero weight case which is similar to the earlier study of differential Lie algebras, and the non-zero weight case which poses new challenges. As applications, abelian extensions of a differential algebra are classified by the second cohomology group. Furthermore, formal deformations of differential algebras are obtained and the rigidity of a differential algebra is characterized by the vanishing of the second cohomology group.