Target space equivariant cohomological structure of the Poisson sigma model

We study a formulation of the standard Poisson sigma model in which the target space Poisson manifold carries the Hamilton action of some finite-dimensional Lie algebra. We show that the structure of the action and the properties of the gauge invariant observables can be understood in terms of the associated target space equivariant cohomology. We use a de Rham superfield formalism to efficiently explore the implications of the Batalin-Vilkoviski master equation. © 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.