On the Hochschild cohomology ring of tensor products of algebras

We prove that, as Gerstenhaber algebras, the Hochschild cohomology ring of the tensor product of two algebras is isomorphic to the tensor product of the respective Hochschild cohomology rings of these two algebras, when at least one of them is finite dimensional. In case of finite dimensional symmetric algebras, this isomorphism is an isomorphism of Batalin-Vilkovisky algebras. As an application, we explain by examples how to compute the Batalin-Vilkovisky structure, in particular, the Gerstenhaber Lie bracket, over the Hochschild cohomology ring of the group algebra of a finite abelian group.