Bialgebroid actions on depth two extensions and duality. (Q1413193)

In this very carefully written and detailed paper, the authors introduce and study the notion of a `depth two ring extension'. Given a ring homomorphism \(N\to M\), a ring extension \(M| N\) is said to be `left depth two' (resp. `right depth two') if there exists a finite integer \(n\), such that \(M\otimes_NM\) is a direct summand of \(\bigoplus^n M\) as an \((N,M)\)-bimodule (resp. \((M,N)\)-bimodule). It is said to be `depth two' if it is both left and right depth two. Examples of depth two extensions include depth two subfactors of finite index, Hopf-Galois extensions with finitely generated projective Hopf algebras and H-separable extensions. Given a depth two extension \(M| N\) one considers four centraliser algebras: \(A=\text{End}{_NM_N}\), \(B=(M\otimes_NM)^M\), \(R=M^N=\text{End}_{N-M}(M)\) and \(C=\text{End}_{N-M}(M\otimes_NM)\). The analysis of the structure of and interplay between these algebras occupies the main part of the paper under review. The authors show that if \(M| N\) is a left depth two extension then the rings \(C\) and \(R\) are Morita equivalent (Theorem~3.12). In addition, every depth two biseparable extension is quasi-Frobenius (Theorem~3.14). Furthermore, \(A\) is a left bialgebroid over \(R\) with left action on \(M\) (Theorem~4.1), and \(\text{End\,}M_N\) is isomorphic to a smash product of \(M\) with \(A\) (Corollary~4.5). Similarly, \(B\) is a right bialgebroid over \(R\) with right action on \(\text{End}{_NM}\) (Theorem~5.2), and the smash product of \(B\) with \(\text{End}{_NM}\) is isomorphic to the endomorphism ring \(\text{End}{_NM\otimes_NM}\) (Proposition~5.6). On the way to stating and proving the above results, the authors also study a duality of bialgebroids over a ring \(S\). They show that if \(H\) is a left \(S\)-bialgebroid that is finitely generated and projective as a right \(S\)-module, then the right dual \(H^*=\Hom(A_S,S_S)\) has a unique right \(S\)-bialgebroid structure compatible with respect to the canonical pairing \(H^*\times H\to S\) (Proposition~2.5). Similar result holds for left duals of bialgebroids that are finitely generated and projective as left \(S\)-modules (Proposition~2.6). The case of Frobenius depth two extensions is studied in greater detail. The main results include the following theorems. (Theorem 6.6) If \(M| N\) is a Frobenius left depth two extension then \(\text{End\,}M_N| M\) is a right depth two extension. (Theorem 7.5) If \(K\) is a field and \(M| N\) is a Frobenius depth two extension of \(K\)-algebras such that the centraliser \(R\) is a separable algebra, then \(A\) and \(B\) are weak bialgebras dual to each other. The paper is concluded with a discussion that also includes the following theorem that is to be published in a forthcoming work: (Theorem 8.8) If \(M| N\) is a Frobenius depth two extension then \(A\) and \(B\) are dual alternative Hopf algebroids with two-sided non-degenerate integrals.