Fiber products, Poincare duality and A_\infty-ring spectra

Abstract

For a Poincare duality space X and a map X -> B, consider the homotopy fiber product X x^B X. If X is orientable with respect to a multiplicative cohomology theory E, then, after suitably regrading, it is shown that the E-homology of X x^B X has the structure of a graded associative algebra. When X -> B is the diagonal map of a manifold X, one recovers a result of Chas and Sullivan about the homology of the free loop space LX.