The cup product on Hochschild cohomology via twisting cochains and applications to Koszul rings

Abstract: Given an acyclic twisting cochain $\pi:C\to A$, from a curved dg coalgebra $C$ to a dg algebra $A$, we show that the associated twisted hom complex $\mathrm{Hom}^\pi_k(C,A)$ has cohomology equal to the Hochschild cohomology of $A$, as a graded ring. As a corollary we find that the Hochschild cohomology of a Koszul algebra $A$, along with its cup product, is a subquotient of the tensor product algebra $A^!\otimes A$ of $A$ with its Koszul dual.