Universal deformations of reductive Lie algebras

We construct multiparameter quantizations of reductive Lie algebras which have the property of universality within a certain class of deformations. The universal deformations can be defined so that the algebra structure on each simple component is the same as that of the standard one-parameter quantization, the remaining parameters being relegated to the coalgebra structure. We discuss an example in which only the latter parameters appear, as a special case of deformations of a semisimple algebra whose simple components remain classical. Deformations are defined as algebras over power series rings and it is essential to require them to be torsion free to secure the universality. The Poincaré-Birkhoff-Witt theorem and the torsion freeness are established for the universal deformation on the basis of results on the representation theory of the deformed algebras.