We study the $E_2$ -algebra $\Lambda \mathfrak {M}_{*,1}:= \coprod _{g\geqslant 0}\Lambda \mathfrak {M}_{g,1}$ consisting of free loop spaces of moduli spaces of Riemann surfaces with one parametrised boundary component, and compute the homotopy type of the group completion $\Omega B\Lambda \mathfrak {M}_{*,1}$ : it is the product of $\Omega ^{\infty }\mathbf {MTSO}(2)$ with a certain free $\Omega ^{\infty }$ -space depending on the family of all boundary-irreducible mapping classes in all mapping class groups $\Gamma _{g,n}$ with $g\geqslant 0$ and $n\geqslant 1$ .

Let X be a simply connected closed oriented manifold of rationally elliptic homotopy type. We prove that the string topology bracket on the $S^1$-equivariant homology $ {\overline {\text {H}}}_\ast ^{S^1}({\mathcal {L}} X,{\mathbb {Q}}) $ of the free loop space of X preserves the Hodge decomposition of $ {\overline {\text {H}}}_\ast ^{S^1}({\mathcal {L}} X,{\mathbb {Q}}) $, making it a bigraded Lie algebra. We deduce this result from a general theorem on derived Poisson structures on the universal enveloping algebras of homologically nilpotent finite-dimensional DG Lie algebras. Our theorem settles a conjecture of [7].

We introduce a notion of Koszul A∞-algebra that generalizes Priddy's notion of a Koszul algebra and we use it to construct small A∞-algebra models for Hochschild cochains. As an application, this yields new techniques for computing free loop space homology algebras of manifolds that are either formal or coformal (over a field or over the integers). We illustrate these techniques in two examples.

For almost any compact connected Lie group $G$ and any field $\mathbb{F}_{p}$, we compute the Batalin–Vilkovisky algebra $H^{\star +\text{dim}\,G}(\text{LBG};\mathbb{F}_{p})$ on the loop cohomology of the classifying space introduced by Chataur and the second author. In particular, if $p$ is odd or $p=0$, this Batalin–Vilkovisky algebra is isomorphic to the Hochschild cohomology $HH^{\star }(H_{\star }(G),H_{\star }(G))$. Over $\mathbb{F}_{2}$ , such an isomorphism of Batalin–Vilkovisky algebras does not hold when $G=\text{SO}(3)$ or $G=G_{2}$. Our elaborate considerations on the signs in string topology of the classifying spaces give rise to a general theorem on graded homological conformal field theory.

In this paper, we define the notion of ${{R}_{*}}\text{-LS}$ category associated to an increasing system of subrings of $\mathbb{Q}$ and we relate it to the usual $\text{LS}$-category. We also relate it to the invariant introduced by Félix and Lemaire in tame homotopy theory, in which case we give a description in terms of Lie algebras and of cocommutative coalgebras, extending results of Lemaire-Sigrist and Félix-Halperin.