Perturbed gradient flow trees and $A_\infty$-algebra structures on Morse cochain complexes

Abstract

We elaborate on an idea of M. Abouzaid of equipping the Morse cochain complex of a smooth Morse function on a closed oriented manifold with the structure of an $A_\infty$-algebra. This is a variation on K. Fukaya's definition of Morse-$A_\infty$-categories for closed oriented manifolds involving families of Morse functions. The purpose of this article is to provide a coherent and detailed treatment of Abouzaid's approach including a discussion of all relevant analytic notions and results.