We construct noncommutative principal bundles deforming principal bundles with a Drinfeld twist (2-cocycle). If the twist is associated with the structure group then we have a deformation of the fibers. If the twist is associated with the automorphism group of the principal bundle, then we obtain noncommutative deformations of the base space as well. Combining the two twist deformations we obtain noncommutative principal bundles with both noncommutative fibers and base space. More in general, the natural isomorphisms proving the equivalence of a closed monoidal category of modules and its twist related one are used to obtain new Hopf-Galois extensions as twists of Hopf-Galois extensions. A sheaf approach is also considered, and examples presented.

Given a Hopf algebra H, we study modules and bimodules over an algebra A that carry an H-action, as well as their morphisms and connections. Bimodules naturally arise when considering noncommutative analogues of tensor bundles. For quasitriangular Hopf algebras and bimodules with an extra quasi-commutativity property we induce connections on the tensor product over A of two bimodules from connections on the individual bimodules. This construction applies to arbitrary connections, i.e. not necessarily H-equivariant ones, and further extends to the tensor algebra generated by a bimodule and its dual. Examples of these noncommutative structures arise in deformation quantization via Drinfeld twists of the commutative differential geometry of a smooth manifold, where the Hopf algebra H is the universal enveloping algebra of vector fields (or a finitely generated Hopf subalgebra).We extend the Drinfeld twist deformation theory of modules and algebras to morphisms and connections that are not necessarily H-equivariant. The theory canonically lifts to the tensor product structure.

We construct a covariant functor from a category of Abelian principal bundles over globally hyperbolic spacetimes to a category of * -algebras that describes quantized principal connections. We work within an appropriate differential geometric setting by using the bundle of connections and we study the full gauge group, namely the group of vertical principal bundle automorphisms. Properties of our functor are investigated in detail and, similar to earlier works, it is found that due to topological obstructions the locality property of locally covariant quantum field theory is violated. Furthermore, we prove that, for Abelian structure groups containing a nontrivial compact factor, the gauge invariant Borchers-Uhlmann algebra of the vector dual of the bundle of connections is not separating on gauge equivalence classes of principal connections. We introduce a topological generalization of the concept of locally covariant quantum fields. As examples, we construct for the category of principal U (1)-bundles two natural transformations from singular homology functors to the quantum field theory functor that can be interpreted as the Chern class and the electric charge. In this case we also prove that the electric charges can be consistently set to zero, which yields another quantum field theory functor that satisfies all axioms of locally covariant quantum field theory.Keywords: locally covariant quantum field theory, quantum field theory on curved spacetimes, gauge theory on principal bundles MSC 2010: 81T20, 81T05, 81T13, 53Cxx

MSC:16T05 17B37 46L87 53D55Keywords: Noncommutative/nonassociative differential geometry Quasi-Hopf algebras Braided monoidal categories Internal homomorphisms Cochain twist quantization a b s t r a c t We systematically study noncommutative and nonassociative algebras A and their bimodules as algebras and bimodules internal to the representation category of a quasitriangular quasi-Hopf algebra. We enlarge the morphisms of the monoidal category of A-bimodules by internal homomorphisms, and describe explicitly their evaluation and composition morphisms. For braided commutative algebras A the full subcategory of symmetric A-bimodule objects is a braided closed monoidal category, from which we obtain an internal tensor product operation on internal homomorphisms. We describe how these structures deform under cochain twisting of the quasi-Hopf algebra, and apply the formalism to the example of deformation quantization of equivariant vector bundles over a smooth manifold. Our constructions set up the basic ingredients for the systematic development of differential geometry internal to the quasi-Hopf representation category, which will be tackled in the sequels to this paper, together with applications to models of noncommutative and nonassociative gravity such as those anticipated from non-geometric string theory.