The cohomology of biquotients via a product on the two-sided bar construction

Abstract

We compute the Borel equivariant cohomology ring of the left $K$-action on a homogeneous space $G/H$, where $G$ is a connected Lie group, $H$ and $K$ are closed, connected subgroups and $2$ and the torsion primes of the Lie groups are units of the coefficient ring. As a special case, this gives the singular cohomology rings of biquotients $H \backslash G / K$. This depends on a version of the Eilenberg-Moore theorem developed in the appendix, where a novel multiplicative structure on the two-sided bar construction $\mathbf{B}(A',A,A")$ is defined, valid when $A' \leftarrow A \to A"$ is a pair of maps of homotopy Gerstenhaber algebras.