Homotopy Algebras Inspired by Classical Open-Closed String Field Theory

We define a homotopy algebra associated to classical open-closed strings. We call it an open-closed homotopy algebra (OCHA). It is inspired by Zwiebach's open-closed string field theory and also is related to the situation of Kontsevich's deformation quantization. We show that it is actually a homotopy invariant notion; for instance, the minimal model theorem holds. Also, we show that our open-closed homotopy algebra gives us a general scheme for deformation of open string structures (A_∞-algebras) by closed strings (L_∞-algebras). H. K is supported by JSPS Research Fellowships for Young Scientists. J. S. is supported in part by NSF grant FRG DMS-0139799 and US-Czech Republic grant INT-0203119.