In a classic paper, Gerstenhaber showed that first order deformations of an associative k-algebra a are controlled by the second Hochschild cohomology group of a. More generally, any n-parameter first order deformation of a gives, due to commutativity of the cup-product on Hochschild cohomology, a graded algebra morphism Sym• (kn ) → Ext2•bimod (a, a). We prove that any extension aof the n-parameter first order deformation of a to an infinite order formal deformation provides a canonical ‘lift’ of the graded algebra morphism above to a dg-algebra morphism Sym• (kn ) → RHom• .
