  In the present paper we generalize the construction of the nil Hecke ring of
Kostant-Kumar to the context of an arbitrary algebraic oriented cohomology
theory of Levine-Morel and Panin-Smirnov, e.g. to Chow groups, Grothendieck's
K_0, connective K-theory, elliptic cohomology, and algebraic cobordism. The
resulting object, which we call a formal (affine) Demazure algebra, is
parameterized by a one-dimensional commutative formal group law and has the
following important property: specialization to the additive and multiplicative
periodic formal group laws yields completions of the nil Hecke and the 0-Hecke
rings respectively. We also introduce a deformed version of the formal (affine)
Demazure algebra, which we call a formal (affine) Hecke algebra. We show that
the specialization of the formal (affine) Hecke algebra to the additive and
multiplicative periodic formal group laws gives completions of the degenerate
(affine) Hecke algebra and the usual (affine) Hecke algebra respectively. We
show that all formal affine Demazure algebras (and all formal affine Hecke
algebras) become isomorphic over certain coefficient rings, proving an analogue
of a result of Lusztig.
