Formal manifolds: foundations

Abstract: This is the first paper in a series that studies smooth relative Lie algebra homologies and cohomologies based on the theory of formal manifolds and formal Lie groups. In this paper, we lay the foundations for this study by introducing the notion of formal manifolds in the context of differential geometry, inspired by the notion of formal schemes in algebraic geometry. We develop the basic theory for formal manifolds, and establish a fully faithful contravariant functor from the category of formal manifolds to the category of topological $\mathbb{C}$-algebras. We also prove the existence of finite products in the category of formal manifolds by studying vector-valued formal functions.